Rottweiler Puppy

WE HAVE MOVED

2006-01-19T03:33:00.000Z

Yep. There comes a time in every right-wing attack dog's life when it's time to move out of the shared kennel and into a place of his very own.

Accordingly, if you're looking for new posts (or, indeed, all the old ones) kindly head over here:

ROTTWEILER PUPPY

We've finished unpacking the Ken Livingstone-shaped chewtoys, and normal posting won't be interrupted by this.

The Free Jack Idema Blogburst

2006-01-18T07:41:00.000Z

One aspect of the case of illegally-imprisoned Special Forces soldier Jack Idema that I've stressed time and again is that the first 'trial', at which Jack, Brent and Ed were sentenced to between eight and ten years in prison, was a complete travesty.
Of course, given the effeminate shrieking from human rights hustlers that accompanies even the slightest deviation from due process, some people might conclude that Idema and his men received a fair enough hearing, and that a kind of rough justice was done. This was certainly the impression MSM were keen to convey in their coverage of the trial.
Here's the BBC, who seemed to find it all rather amusing:

There is no doubt that some hearings descended into almost comical chaos, with witnesses having stand-up rows with Idema and the other Americans. And the prosecution seemed to base most of its case on accusation rather than evidence.
Translation was another problem - some of those chosen were not up to what was a difficult job.

... So what's it to be? The travesty the Free Jack campaign claim, or the somewhat rowdy, but basically sound, trial MSM were witness to?

Well, a good place to begin putting our side of the story is with the trial judge, 'former' Taliban member Abdul Baset Bakhtyari:

The original motion, like all motions filed, was ignored by Bakhtyari, who claimed the Interim Criminal Code, was merely a guideline, not really law, and that the laws of his former Taliban government would be applicable.

That's not really a good start, is it? Because, as a generally-accepted rule, judges don't get to choose which legal system they're going to try a case under. More to the point, since Idema and his men had spent the preceding three years hunting, capturing and killing members of the Taliban, it seems almost laughable to suggest that Bakhtyari could have been viewed as even remotely qualified to preside over the case. The phrase 'conflict of interest' doesn't even begin to describe this situation.

So much for the judge. What about the prosecutor, Abdul Fatah? After all, it was his job to assemble and present the case against Idema and his men -- Surely if this had been done in a fair and even-handed manner, Judge Bakhtyari's scope for mischief would have been severely curtailed?
Well, some hope. Prosecutor Fatah, you see, was an ex-KGB man, who'd worked for the Soviets during their occupation of Afghanistan. Here's an example of how he conducted the case against Jack and his men:

Then Fatah would pass the note up to prosecutor Dawari, who would then walk right up to the Judge's bench and hand it to him while Jack, or later, one of the attorneys, would be talking. Bakhtyari would then read the note, and make some wild ruling. Regardless of how many times the defense objected or yelled about the secret communications, Bakhtyari would just ignore the complaint.

... And so much for the prosecutor. What about a defence team? Well, although Idema and his men finally managed to acquire a U.S. lawyer, John Tiffany, to represent them, the state of play in the early stages of the trial was rather different:

Bennett finally got a female Afghan lawyer in September 2004, ten days before the final verdict. She met Bennett ONE TIME for 20 MINUTES. She promptly informed Bennett that if she represented him Bakhtyari would not allow her to speak because she was a woman, and he did not normally allow women to appear in his court without a Burka. Then she dropped the real bomb-- if she appeared in court for Bennett, she would be murdered.

Now, if the Islamofascist judge, the resentful, ex-KGB prosecutor and defence lawyers placed under threat of death should they appear in court weren't enough, there's also the complete lack of evidence against Idema and his men.

Let's be clear about this. I'm not saying the evidence presented by the prosecution was weak, or flawed, or fell apart under cross-examination. The prosecution simply produced no evidence against Jack Idema whatsoever. No photographs showing marks of the torture Idema supposedly committed, no sworn-in witnesses. Nothing.
Even more galling, when Idema and his men attempted to present evidence that, in a normal courtroom, would have cleared them, the following occurred:

Jack read the law about being able to call a witness and Bakhtyari said, "ok, call your witness." Fatah handed a secret note up once again. This time to Prosecutor Dawari, who read it, smiled, then handed it to Bakhtyari. The Taliban Judge read the note, chuckled, then said, "We will save calling witnesses until the next hearing and you can do it then, this hearing is finished." After four more hearings, and a verdict of guilty, the defense had still not been allowed to call a single witness or ask a single question of any of the terrorists who said the were hung upside down at the first "press conference" which Bakhtyari later called a hearing.

Let's put all of this together. Here we have a 'trial' in which:

The judge is a member of the terrorist organisation the defendants were hunting
The judge threw out the law of the land and tried the case under a completely different legal system
The prosecutor conferred with the judge, passing secret notes and whispered advice to him
Lawyers for the defence were threatened with death if they appeared in court
No evidence of any kind was offered by the prosecution in support of the charges they brought against Idema and his men
The defence were never allowed to present any evidence or call any witnesses

Question: What best describes the September 2004 trial? A shameful miscarriage of justice? Or, as the BBC would have it, 'almost comical chaos'? The answer to this one should really be a no-brainer.

So what can we do about this? Well, for bloggers, there's the weekly Free Jack Idema Blogburst. We are still really, really, really desperate for more people to get involved with this -- The only way we can help Jack, Brent and Ed is by getting the truth about the case out to as many people as possible. Obviously, the more of us there are posting on this topic, the greater chance there is that our voices will be heard.
Anyone wishing to sign up for the Free Jack Idema Blogburst should email Cao or Rottweiler Puppy for details. If you want to know more about the story, Cao's Blog has a large section devoted to Jack Idema. There's also a timeline here, and, of course, a huge amount of information is available over at SuperPatriots, without whose work none of us would have learned about Jack's story.

Finally, PLEASE NOTE: The SuperPatriots and Jack images on this site are used with WRITTEN COPYRIGHT PERMISSION and any use by any third party is subject to legal action by SuperPatriots.US

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BBC's Jim Muir: Enriching The Truth About Iran

2006-01-17T05:55:00.000Z

Four years ago, one of the most stupid and offensive excuses offered by the BBC on behalf of their beloved Islamopaths came from one, Jim Muir. In an article which followed the tried and tested formula of blaming 9/11 on America's support for Israel, and which raised eyebrows at both CAMERA and Honest.Reporting.com, Muir tried his hand at Explaining Arab Anger:

Now, he [Ariel Sharon] is Israel's prime minister, and he's eagerly signing up to take part in America's new crusade of good against evil.
The above was one of many such incidents during Israel's adventure in Lebanon, in which uncounted thousands of Lebanese and Palestinian civilians were killed.
They died unmourned and largely unnoticed by the American public, whose largesse - financial, military and political - made it all possible.

This slice of nastiness made its appearance on the BBC's servers eight -- eight -- days after 9/11. We mention it because, unlike the BBC's John Simpson (who makes an appearance in yesterday's Telegraph in order to complain that he's now expected to turn the terrorists he interviews over to the police), Jim Muir's name might not be immediately recognisable. On the strength of his latest performance, it ought to be:

There is a strange-looking building alongside the headquarters of the Iranian Atomic Energy Organisation, in its spacious compound in north-central Tehran.
It looks like an early attempt at a modernistic mosque. There is a big, rather flat dome, with a tall, square column sticking up beside it, that could be a minaret.

This is, of course, the place where swarthy, bearded Islamopaths handle the public face of Iran's plot to acquire nuclear weapons. This is a point worth stressing because Muir's about to insinuate something else. Watch this move, because it's worthy of Goebbels:But this is, in fact, the Tehran Nuclear Research Reactor - and there is nothing particularly secret about it.
... And this is supposed to mean -- What exactly? That there's nothing secretive about the Mullah's attempts to go nuclear? No hidden bunkers miles under solid rock? No evasiveness when it comes to inspection teams getting access to them?

In fact, I was allowed to film there several times, though we had to make sure the call to prayer was not going on at the time, otherwise people would have thought it really was a mosque.

Now, let's assume that Jim Muir isn't a completely stupid person. He must know that even people as deranged as the Mullahs aren't dumb enough to put their nuclear secrets on display and invite the BBC over to take pictures. So why is he trying to sell readers on the same protestations of transparency that the Iranian government pumps out? This isn't journalism, it's propaganda.

The reactor was the first foundation-stone in Iran's nuclear programme. It was constructed back in the 1950s.

Meanwhile, the facilities for enriching weapons-grade uranium are very modern indeed. They're also well-hidden, just in case anyone thought the illegal stuff goes on in a mosque-like building in downtown Tehran.

By now, you have probably guessed who built it. That is right - the Americans. They even gave the Iranians some highly-enriched uranium to experiment with as well.

Well, doubtless people who get all their news from the BBC would find it unsurprising that the U.S. kick-started Iran's nuclear programme, though this is only because the likes of Jim Muir have nattered incessantly on about the U.S.'s 'arming of Saddam' for the past four years. For those of us who don't take anything the slimes in big media say at face value, however, the truth has long appeared very differently.

Of course, things were very different then. Iran was ruled by the Shah, and the Islamic revolution was still in the distant future.

Twenty-nine years in the future, to be precise ... Though if this doesn't strike everyone as sufficiently 'distant' (and, let's face it, sections of the left are still wailing about the British Empire), it's also worth bearing in mind that Iran's current nuclear technology has far less to do with America's actions half-a-century ago than it does with the inability of Pakistan to keep a tight enough grip on its nuclear secrets.

The point is that there is so much geopolitics and hype surrounding the Iranian nuclear issue, that it is hard to get an objective perspective on it.

What Muir seems to be doing here is planting the suggestion that since Iran has possessed a nuclear reactor for fifty years without trying for a bomb, we should all relax. If that is his point, then, for a second time, he's trading on what he hopes is the ignorance of his readers. See, as Muir well knows, there's a world of difference between possessing the ability to produce electricity and the ability to produce weapons-grade nuclear fuel. Since the Mullahs are trying to do just that, the 'hype' surrounding their actions is very justified: to put it simply, there is no legitimate reason for enriching uranium unless you intend to use it for making bombs.

It is of course the Americans who are now prodding the campaign to pressure the Iranians into giving up their nuclear ambitions. The US and Iran have been bitterly at odds since the Iranian revolution in 1979 and the hostage-taking at the US embassy in Tehran.

Well, we're sure that Israel is doing some Mullah-prodding as well. What with the threats to wipe them off the map and all. We're also sure that although the 1979 hostage crisis didn't exactly warm relations between Iran and the U.S., Washington's opposition to the world's largest state sponsor of terrorism going nuclear has less to do with sour grapes than it does with common sense.

Today, American forces practically encircle Iran. They are on warships in the Gulf, in bases on its Arab side, and all over the place in neighbouring Afghanistan to the east, and Iraq to the west.

Damn those American Imperialists! If only they would stop spreading freedom and representative democracy, then head-hacking, medieval tyrants wouldn't feel so threatened.

Hard-liners in Washington clearly hope, that after the Taleban and Saddam Hussein, the Islamic regime in Tehran will be next to go.

Well, to be fair, there are very few (read zero) countries who wouldn't like to see the back of the Mullahs. That the U.S. and Israel are the ones pushing hardest to remove them isn't to say that the rest of the world thinks Islamofascists bristling with nuclear weapons is an ideal situation ... But you see how Muir's line of attack is working? What he wants to do is create the impression that the U.S. is isolated in its dislike of the Iranian regime. This simply isn't true.

So it is not surprising that they should seize the nuclear issue as a stick with which to beat Iran - and equally unsurprising that Tehran should see the mounting international pressure as an American-orchestrated campaign to force an independent nation into submission.

Oh my. Those poor Iranians. First they're 'encircled' by 'hard-liners' and now the Americans are 'beating them with sticks'. What's an ~~evil dictatorship ruled by madmen~~ sovereign nation to do? Well, threaten to wipe other sovereign nations off the map, obviously.

That is an argument that goes down well with many ordinary Iranians, including some who are not fans of the Islamic regime. It is hard for them not to agree that there is a double standard at play.

Well, this much is true enough. Whereas British citizens like Jim Muir can say whatsoever they please, ordinary Iranians do, indeed, find it 'hard not to agree' with the line their deranged leaders take. They also find it hard to dress themselves, choose whether or not to wear beards, worship something other than the Moongod, and, in the case of 18-year-old rape victims who fight back, hard to keep breathing. Isn't theocracy wonderful, Jim?

Everybody knows, they say, that America's closest regional ally Israel, has basements full of nuclear weapons, but nobody says a word about it. Nearby Pakistan and India both have the bomb too. So why not us?

No news, though on who, exactly, the 'they' doing this saying are. While we're sure Jim Muir isn't just lazily using the fact that some Iranians must, indeed, think such things as an excuse to push his anti-American line, still, it's a fair bet that the sort of people who make such utterances are more likely to be found leading 'Death to America' chants in a mosque than, say, sitting on death row for the 'crime' of being raped.

The authorities, of course, insist that they are not after nuclear arms, just peaceful power. But there is a nationalist streak in most Iranians.

As, indeed, there is in most people ... Though just what this has to do with telling bald-faced lies about attempts to build illegal WMDs is anyone's guess. Jim Muir, you see, doesn't really get around to explaining the logic he's using here.

Many would be proud if they did join the nuclear club, and assume that is what their leaders are trying to do, though some would not want the bombs to be in the hands of the current regime.

Which is a roundabout way of saying -- What? That although Iranians love their country as much as anyone else, and although they'd like to see their country get ahead, the thought of nukes in the hands of President Wacko scares them as much as it does the rest of us? Because, as an endorsement of President Bush's position, you'd really have to go a long way to beat that one, wouldn't you?

Whether the West likes it or not, it has become an issue of national pride, which is why there is not much audible dissent across the normally fractious political spectrum.

Well, the 'lack of audible dissent' might have more to do with, you know, the religious police dragging bloggers off to torture chambers ... And as for the 'fractious political spectrum', well, where to begin? Perhaps by stating that 'spectrum' is a poor descriptor for a police state which only allows politicians to run in elections if they can demonstrate their commitment to Islamofascism.

But that is not to say that there no different approaches. Until late 2003, it looked as though the nuclear issue might just act as a bridge to draw Iran out of its isolation.

This was certainly the diplomatic line the so-called EU Three (Britain, Germany and Fwance) ran with, but let's be quite clear about this: this 'drawing out' of Iran was supposed to happen if, and only if, the Mullahs agreed to give up their nuclear ambitions. Somehow, Jim Muir manages to make it sound as though those nice diplomats weren't really trying to disarm Iran, when, in fact, the opposite is true.

While insisting on their right in principle to develop their own nuclear fuel, a combination of reformists and pragmatic conservatives agreed with Britain, France and Germany to suspend Iran's enrichment activities.

This is true. The Mullahs did, indeed, agree to this, at least on Saturdays, Mondays and Wednesdays. On Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays, of course, they rattled their sabres and asserted their 'right' to enrich uranium -- Anyone following the story closely would know this, so why is Jim Muir trying to sell his readers on the idea that the diplomatic route taken by Europe was anything other than a complete failure? (Oh, and in case anyone thinks our weekly schedule for Mullahs is running a little light, Fridays in Iran are reserved for the serious business of standing in a mosque screaming, 'Death to America. Death to Israel'.)

At one moment, it even looked as though Tehran had driven a considerable wedge between the three big European powers, and the US.

Um ... no. What actually happened was a bunch of credulous dhimmis in MSM tried running with this line for a while, in spite of strenuous denials from both Washington and the EU. Now, doubtless Muir and his cohorts would dearly love there to be a rift between America and Europe over this (or any) issue, but the fact of it is that wishful thinking on the part of BBC journalists doesn't make a story true.

But then two years ago came a lurch towards the hard line, when the conservatives won general elections, and then took the presidency last year.

Certainly, it's true that President Ahmadinejad is even crazier and more fanatical than his predecessor, but, please, can we have less of the 'general election' stuff? Iran isn't a democracy, and its people aren't free to choose their leaders. Alright, they get a little more wiggle room than the 'vote for me or go through the shredder' system Saddam operated, but, for the sake of decency, could Muir please just call a police state by its proper name?

The detente fostered by former President Mohammad Khatami has gone down the drain, along with the goodwill of men like British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, who made more trips to Tehran than to anywhere else. The European carrot has become a stick.

Did Khatami have Jack Straw's 'goodwill'? Really, we mean? And was there 'detente' between Europe and Iran? Much as we're sure Jim Muir longs for a return to the good old days when the Iranians did their brutal theocracy with a handshake and a smile, the only substantive difference between Khatami and Ahmadinejad (apart from the latter's obvious insanity) is that the new boy can't be bothered to dance the diplomatic two-step with Euroweenies. This isn't so much an end to detente as a dropping of pretence.

At the moment, it looks as though Iran has gone into reverse, on a course that may lead to greater isolation and diplomatic and economic pressures.

It might also lead to airstrikes, Jim. Don't forget the airstrikes. We're sure Israel and the U.S. haven't.

It is not yet certain that it will face international sanctions after referral to the UN Security Council.

True, but somewhat beside the point. See, maybe Jim Muir wasn't paying attention in 2003, but if the liberation of Iraq proved one thing, it's that international law is exactly what the U.S. says it is. The real question, then, is whether President Bush is prepared to let the Mullahs get their greasy paws on nuclear weapons or not. The BBC, of course, keep running with the line that military action against Iran would be 'unthinkable'. Strangely, though, they don't say the same thing when the Mullahs threaten to wipe Israel from the map. Funny, that.

It always used to slip off the hook at the last moment, though the new hardline leaders, especially the president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is less inclined and less adept at that.

Translation: the Mullahs have arrived at the conclusion that if they're going to build some nukes, they might as well just get on and build them. After all, it now looks unlikely that the U.S. will cut them a break in the region by failing in its mission to democratise Iraq, so if they don't act now, all that frightful freedom and democracy stuff might actually start spreading in their direction.

If it does come to the crunch, Iran will not be an easy nut to crack - especially on this issue, where there is not likely to be a big split between the regime and the people.

And, of course, Iran's religious police are always on hand with the electrodes and boiling water, just in case anyone does decide to 'split' with the Mullahs' genocidal ambitions. This, as Jim Muir just keeps on forgetting to point out, is one of the principal joys of living in a police state -- People live their lives in so much terror that getting one to actually stand up in front of the nice BBC man and declare their opposition to Islamism is about as likely as getting Jim Muir to do the job he's paid to do and produce unbiased news.

A few years ago, some Iranians were tempted to think that the Americans might be able to bring them a better life. But now, looking at the chaos just next door in Iraq, they have had second thoughts.

Yes, yes, yes. It's all about Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq. Only, the calculation here doesn't involve what the Iranian people want, leastways not most immediately. Instead, the issue before us is whether or not we are prepared to let a madman get his hands on nuclear weapons. If we decide not, then it is increasingly likely that force will be the only way we have to end this. Iran's President Ahmadinejad can plead the insanity defence for not acknowledging this reality, but what on earth is Jim Muir's excuse?

Smiler Plays Capture The Flag

2006-01-15T04:52:00.000Z

It seems that, having spent the last sixty years systematically dismantling Britishness, the left have decided flag-waving and patriotism isn't just for conservatives:

Britain should have a day to celebrate its national identity, Gordon Brown has proposed in a speech portraying Labour as a modern patriotic party.
The chancellor used his first major speech of 2006 to urge Labour supporters to "embrace the Union flag".
In an address to the Fabian Society in London, he said it is important the flag is recaptured from the far right.

Well, breaking out the flags and celebrating Britishness is always a good thing. Indeed, there's a strong argument that this is exactly what our country needs in order to return to the path of greatness -- Witness the bolstering of patriotism in the U.S. under Reagan.

But. It's difficult not to feel that Gordon Brown is, literally, the last person on earth we'd want to trust with the task of bringing this patriotic revival about. After all, whether they're handing back the rebate or signing up to the Human Rights Act, Smiler's party have never shown much concern for British sovereignty in the past. So bluffer's tip, Gordon: selling others on the joys of loving their country works better if you don't belong to a party that's spent the past eight years giving chunks of it away to France.

Then, of course, there's the left. See, it's all very well for Brown to whine about 'recapturing the flag from the far right', but from where the majority of us were standing, this wouldn't have ever been necessary if leftists hadn't spent decades howling about fascism every time a Union Jack was unfurled. See, the only reason the likes of the BNP [for the benefit of non-British readers, that's our largest far-right party] have ended up as the sole custodians of patriotic fervour in Britain is the left's sustained campaign to slur every genuine patriot in the country with the tag of 'racist'. The reason the far-right are still holding onto the flag is because they're the only people who don't object to the label.

This, then, is the real flaw in Smiler's plan -- If he's serious about doing some flag-waving, it isn't the far-right headbangers in the BNP who're going to cause him problems, but people like Anne Owers:

Prison staff have been told to stop wearing Cross of St George tiepins because they could be "misinterpreted'' as a racist symbol.
Anne Owers, the Chief Inspector of Prisons, was "concerned'' to see a number of officers at Wakefield jail in Yorkshire wearing the tiepins, apparently in support of a cancer charity.
"There was clear scope for misinterpretation,'' she says in a report on the prison published today. "Prison Service orders made clear that unauthorised badges and pins should not be worn.'' As one of her recommendations, she adds: "Staff should not wear unauthorised pins.''

Considering the vast amount of power Nu Labour have transferred into the hands of idiots like Owers, Gordon Brown's difficulty won't be how to wrest our flag from the BNP, but persuading his own army of socialist drones to let him start waving it once he's done so

Muslims Hate Gays: L3 Go Into Shock

2006-01-13T21:28:00.000Z

Well, it's always hilarious when your enemies come to blows:

The head of the Muslim Council of Britain, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, is being investigated by police for saying that homosexuality was "harmful".
In an interview with BBC Radio 4's PM Programme on 3 January, Sir Iqbal also criticised same-sex civil partnerships.

There are three players in this game of Whose Victim Status Is It Anyway?, and, for the benefit of anyone not paying attention, we should really list them before proceeding any further:

'Sir' Iqbal Sacranie. Occupation: leader of the Muslim Council of Britain (our CAIR). Hobbies: Jew baiting, Hamas sympathising, and, now, gay bashing
Peter Tatchell. Occupation: leader of Outrage (who are ... um ... outraged because everyone doesn't love gays). Hobbies: Straight bating, invading other people's private lives, and, now, Sacranie bashing.
The British Police Force. Occupation: law enforcement. Hobbies: badgering anyone who criticises gays, failing to prevent real crime, and, now, badgering 'Sir' Iqbal Sacranie.

What should we make of all this?

Well, first and foremost, it really is nice to see two of Western civilisation's archest enemies squaring up for a deathmatch. After all, it's always been something of a mystery as to precisely why so many on the pro-gay left are keen to snuggle up with a religion whose only interest in homosexuals is the question of whether they wind up hanged, stoned or defenestrated.

Perhaps part of the problem is that the left, committed as they are to wrecking our civilisation, can't quite wrap their tiny, little brains around the notion that Islamism, while similarly committed to the West's destruction, doesn't intend to replace the Great Satan with sodomy lectures for pre-schoolers. To his credit, this seems to be something that Peter Tatchell grasps, albeit vaguely. Here he is, attempting to sell 'Sir' Iqbal on the joys of inclusiveness:

"The MCB's view that everyone should be valued equally clearly does not include gay people. Earlier this week the leader of the MCB, Sir Iqbal Sacranie, condemned the gay community, saying same-sex relationships were harmful, immoral and spread disease," said Mr Tatchell.
"Instead of sowing division and stirring intolerance, the MCB should be working to secure a fair and just society, free from both Islamophobia and homophobia," concluded Mr Tatchell.

... Of course, one might argue that Tatchell's own policy of forcibly outing closeted gays falls into the definition of 'sowing division and stirring intolerance'. Does this hissy fit mean he's learned something about respecting and tolerating others? Well, no. All Tatchell's really focussing on is the notion that Islam, as the new kid on the counter-culture block, really oughtn't to be stirring up trouble for the people who were busy wrecking Western civilisation with gay pride marches before 'Sir' Iqbal had even heard of Salman Rushdie, much less argued that 'death would, perhaps, be too easy for him'.

*sigh* Things were so much easier back in the days when the ROP dealt with the book burnings and anti-war marches, while Tatchell and his cronies handled the forcible outing of Conservative Mps. If everyone would just stick to the proscribed targets this kind of thing would never happen.

Obviously, though, while you can say anything you damn well please about straight, white men, our wonderfully PC PCs go into alert-status when anyone speaks ill of a Designated Victim Group. In practice, this means 'Sir' Iqbal will have his collar felt by our increasingly Orwellian (thought) police, who seem genuinely unaware of the difference between the commission of an actual crime and perfectly lawful free speech.

And, indeed, while it's gratifying to see someone like Sacranie hung by the same petard he's gleefully hoisted others onto in the past, still, it would be nice to live in a Britain in which the cops spent more time catching muggers and rapists than enforcing politically correct patterns of speech.

Perhaps mindful of this, 'Sir' Iqbal hastily offered the following defence of his little anti-gay misstep:

"What I said was only to reiterate the well-known Islamic position that the practice of homosexuality is not acceptable. It is a sin. This view is shared in other scriptures, such as those of Christianity and Judaism. So this is not a campaign that I have started. We have only stated our position which is indeed that of all Abrahamic faiths. What amazes us is this concerted attempt to silence views we believe we are articulating for quite a large section of society.
"We see the great controversy it has created within the world Anglican communion with the real threat of major division over this question. So our views are quite relevant."

Well, where to begin? Perhaps by pointing out that while the 21st century Christian position on homosexuality is as follows:

Practicing gays are committing a sin and God will judge them for this. Likewise, He will also judge the rest of the human race, since, by definition, we are all sinners. Down here, what a good Christian should do is forgive the sinner, but hate the sin.

... While over in Moongodland with 'Sir' Iqbal, they handle things rather differently:

So, please, let's have less of the thought police, and less hissy fits from the gay pride brigades. Instead, what we'd really like is for an MSM reporter to press the ever-squirming, ever-evasive 'Sir' Iqbal Sacranie on the following question:

Do you, 'Sir' Iqbal, support

(a) The public execution of gays, as the Koran commands, or,
(b) The live and let live philosophy so beloved of we infidels

Granted, 'Sir' Iqbal might resent finding himself forced to choose between barbarism and idolatry, but -- hey! -- a straight answer might, at least, settle this matter once and for all in the minds of people like Peter Tatchell. Perhaps this is why it isn't likely that 'Sir' Iqbal will ever give us one. After all, never alienate a useful idiot if you absolutely don't have to.

(Welcome readers of The Devil's Kitchen

Free Jack Idema Blogburst

2006-01-11T05:56:00.000Z

Each time I write about the plight of Jack Idema, the U.S. Special Forces soldier illegally imprisoned in Afghanistan along with his right-hand man, Brent Bennet, and Emmy award-winning journalist, Ed Caraballo, I'm conscious that I haven't really talked, in detail, about Jack's relationship with the Afghan troops he trained and fought alongside.
There are two, conflicting, accounts of Jack's involvement with the Afghan military:

The official line is that Idema was a freelancer; a mercenary hunting Islamopaths for the bounties on their heads who had no official standing in either the U.S. or Afghan military. This was the U.S. Government's position at the time of Idema's first trial in September 2004. It was also the position of the Karzai government in Afghanistan.
Jack Idema, of course, tells a very different story, stating that he was working as a military advisor to the Northern Alliance, standing shoulder-to-shoulder with these men as they hunted down Islamopaths, not for reward money, but out of patriotism.

Clearly, both these accounts can't be correct. And, clearly, war-zones around the world are filled with various adventurers, mercenaries and bounty hunters. This is the reason why MSM's claims to have never heard of Idema prior to his arrest in 2004 are so damaging -- They add credence to the U.S. and Afghan governments' assertion that Jack was a rogue-operator, and, effectively, deflect interest from the case. After all, there's a big difference between imprisoning a mercenary serving himself and imprisoning a U.S. soldier serving his country.
It's for this reason those of us involved in the campaign to see justice done in this case are so keen to stress both Jack's past military record and the duplicitous nature of big media, which first reported on the work Idema was doing in Afghanistan, then denied all knowledge of him a year later.
To settle this, however, the Free Jack campaign doesn't have to rely on self-serving journalists and government mouthpieces -- We can actually call on the testimony of people Jack Idema fought alongside in the battle to rid Afghanistan of the Taliban and al-Qaeda. These are the men of the Northern Alliance (properly, the United Front), and to understand how they fit into Jack Idema's story, it's necessary to understand a little of their long and honourable history defending Afghanistan from Her enemies.
Much of this success can be attributed to one person, Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud. Though sneeringly described as a 'warlord' by MSM, Massoud was actually a highly educated and moderate man who believed passionately that the future of Afghanistan should be both democratic and free of fanaticism. Fortunately for the Afghan people, Massoud was also a military genius, responsible for inflicting a staggering 60% of the total casualties suffered by the Red Army during the Soviet occupation.
After the Russians were expelled, Massoud set up democratic rule in the regions of Afghanistan his forces controlled, spending the remaining years of his life struggling to remove first the murderous Hekmatyar, then the Taliban, from power.
You can read about Massoud's life here, but what must be understood about this remarkable man is that he, as well as those who followed him, are exactly the kind of people we need on our side in the WOT.
Here's Massoud on democracy:

The future government should be formed through elections by the people. Men and women should take part. The only form of government, which can balance the different ethnicities, is democracy.

And, again, here's Massoud's reaction to the Taliban's demand that he leave Afghanistan after they seized power:

Is it just that when we were in Kabul leading the country, when we had the people's consent, we promised to protect them, to defend our independence and to take care of Afghanistan and its people and now that these people are in great danger we would leave them? Is this really justice? I do not think it is justified. I will stay in this country until my last breath and resist. I am convinced that, God willing, Afghanistan one day will be free.

Commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of Panjsher, was assassinated by al-Qaeda suicide bombers on 9th September, 2001.
Two weeks after that Jack Idema arrived in Afghanistan. He, and hundreds of other Special Forces soldiers, were under orders from coalition leaders to train and equip Northern Alliance forces in order to remove the Taliban. This, of course, was exactly the sort of work that Idema specialised in -- After stints in Haiti, El Salvador, Thailand and Lithuania, he was one of the most capable men in the world at pulling ragged, ill-equipped armies together into crack fighting units. You can read press reports archived at SuperPatriots which detail some of the work Jack did with the Northern Alliance here, here, and here, but this is only part of the story.

See, although MSM were chiefly interested in Idema during 2001, the Northern Alliance troops he trained and served alongside for three years deserve a hearing too. They're brave soldiers, most of whom have spent their whole adult lives fighting for a free and democratic Afghanistan. What's more, several of them were tortured, tried and imprisoned alongside Jack, Brent and Ed in September 2004.
One of these men, Major Ezmerai Amin, has this to say about Idema and the state of Afghanistan under Karzai:

Commander Massoud was right. But Massoud told us to follow his way, and I have dedicate my life to follow the way of Massoud because to save my country and the world. And my commander has too. This is why our people follow Jack, because he follow Massoud's way. One time when I was still in Pulacharke I was very sad, and I said to Jack, fuck Massoud, because we follow Massoud's way we are in prison. Then Jack remind to me that Massoud would never give up, he would keep to fight to make real freedom not freedom only for the rich people. We talked about how Massoud would not allow a road to be built to his village until all the country had roads. But this government, they buy rich cars and build roads to their villages while people are still starving and with no doctors.

Major Amin, like the other Afghans imprisoned with Jack, was released after their case went to appeal a year ago -- Jack, Brent and Ed should have been freed at that point too, but the U.S. State Department and FBI put pressure on the Karzai government to illegally continue their detention. What's worth noting, though, is that Major Amin pays Jack Idema the highest complement he can -- He compares him to Massoud, modern Afghanistan's greatest hero.
Then there's Lieutenant 'Zorro' Rasuli:

Actually, Jack took me with him for just one month from General Atta, but I don't know why he trust his life, his power, and everything on me, but I can say one thing; after the death of our leader Commander Massoud he will now be my commander on the rest of my life, and in any place I'm waiting for his orders.

Zorro means this. After he was released along with the other Afghans convicted with Idema, he elected to remain in prison until his three American compatriots are free.

So, question: if Idema were nothing more than a mercenary out to make a quick buck, why is it that he inspires such loyalty among Northern Alliance troops? The answer to this one should be obvious -- The Afghan soldiers Idema trained and fought with see, in him, a similar commitment to rid the world of terrorism as the one they feel.
Here's New Yorker writer, Jon Lee Anderson, offering us an insight into how this camaraderie played out during the war to remove the Taliban from power:

On the way down the mountain, Jack, who was armed and wearing full combat regalia, clambered onto one of the mujahideen tanks with a tin of white paint and a brush. He wrote, "N.Y.P.D." on the tank's green steel carapace. The mujahideen smiled obligingly and asked to borrow his paint. In lacy Farsi script they added the words "Dear Massoud, we will follow your way."

Right now, three of men who fought that war are stuck in prison at the behest of the State Department. Meanwhile, just this week, President Karzai begged Taliban scumbag-in-chief Mullah Omar to 'get in touch if he wanted peace'.

It's difficult, not to conclude that something's going badly wrong with a war in which we offer amnesty to the chief architects of 9/11, while imprisoning the men who risked their lives to bring these animals to justice.

So what can we do? Well, anyone reading this with their own blog can sign up for the weekly Free Jack Idema Blogburst by emailing Cao or Rottweiler Puppy for details. I'd urge everyone to do this, as we're still terribly short on takers. If you want to know more about the story, Cao's Blog has a large section devoted to Jack Idema. There's also a timeline here, and, of course, a huge amount of information is available over at SuperPatriots, without whose work none of us would have learned about Jack's story.

Finally, PLEASE NOTE: The SuperPatriots and Jack images on this site are used with WRITTEN COPYRIGHT PERMISSION and any use by any third party is subject to legal action by SuperPatriots.US

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L3 Vs The SAS

2006-01-08T16:17:00.000Z

Now here's a piece of really good news:

An SAS corporal facing a murder charge after shooting dead an Iraqi civilian will not now be prosecuted, the Sunday Telegraph can reveal.
The decision, made by Army lawyers last week, follows a two-year investigation. Senior SAS officers are furious at the length of time the inquiry took to complete because all the evidence was obtained within 12 months. They say the file has been with the Army Prosecuting Authority pending a decision ever since.

... But two years? How could it possibly take so long to reach the kind of conclusion it would take most normal people two minutes to arrive at? Here are the facts of the case:

The soldier, who cannot be named, was one of four members of the SAS accompanying MI6 officers on a covert operation when the boat they were travelling in came under fire from the river bank.
The SAS team gave chase, following the suspects to a nearby village. One of the soldiers claimed that he saw an Iraqi - later identified as Mr al-Roomi - enter a house armed with an AK47 assault rifle.
The non-commissioned officer, fearful that he was about to shot at, fired several rounds through the door, killing Mr al-Roomi.

... So, remind us, when did we stop calling this sort of thing by it's proper name: warfare? Hmm? Because unless the people trying to prosecute this as a murder were running with the line that anyone dumb enough to take pot-shots at members of the Special Air Service deserves to be spared on the grounds of mental deficiency, there's simply no way this could be regarded as anything other than a righteous kill.

And, of course, this isn't the first time we've been here -- Last November, seven perfectly decent members of the Parachute Regiment were dragged in front of a court marital charged with murder. Back then, the case was dismissed on the grounds that all the prosecution witnesses were either proved to have lied or, in some cases, admitted to having done so.

In that case, as with today's, it seemed obvious that the desire of the media, L3 and bottom-feeding human rights lawyers to see our troops brought up on charges of some kind was having an effect on the way the army itself deals with accusations of wrongdoing in its ranks. Why else would seven Paras find themselves dragged into a courtroom when no credible evidence existed to be brought against them? And why else would it take two, full years for army investigators to conclude that a member of Britain's most elite regiment had a perfect right to return fire when fired upon? To put it bluntly, the appearance of justice is becoming more important to the hierarchy of the British Army than actually delivering it to the troops they send into harm's way.

That this is unacceptable should go without saying -- It affects both the morale and efficiency of troops if they're forced to calculate the possibility of years in a legal limbo before taking a shot at some Islamopath with a gun. More to the point, if these over-zealously long investigations and show-trails are designed to 'prove' the transparency of military justice, then, really, the top brass needn't have bothered.

See, the usual suspects on the left who clamour for 'justice' and 'human rights' actually want nothing of the kind. Leastways where our troops are concerned, all L3 are after are a few high-profile wins with which to further vilify coalition troops. For these scumbags, matters of guilt or innocence are irrelevant -- What they want, all they want, are scalps.

The people responsible for bringing these cases against our soldiers should quit trying to placate the left and concentrate, instead, on making sure they don't get them.

BBC: British Culture Responsible For Suicide Bombings

2006-01-08T03:52:00.000Z

It's now six months since four crazed Islamopaths murdered fifty-two of their own countrymen in cold blood on July 7th. Accordingly, the BBC's Emily Buchanan has been sent to track down and interview some of the only 'victims' of terrorism MSM seem to care about:

Muslims in Dewsbury were shocked by the killing and by the stigma it left on their community.

This is opposed to the far less significant 'shock' felt by fifty-two Londoners who found themselves exposed to the stigma of sudden death. Of course, just as the BBC don't actually produce any grieving widows or orphans to demand something be done to reign in radical Islam, neither does Emily Buchanan produce any genuinely shocked Muslims. In fact, when she gets down to the business of interviewing Dewsbury's Muslims, many of them seem to have moved straight past 'shocked' in order to settle on some of the nutty conspiracy theories with which the ROP habitually defends itself:

We found no sign of the bombers being hailed as martyrs here. In the youth club, where boys are not allowed to mix with girls, there was instead disbelief and scepticism about the events of 7 July.
A group of teenage boys told us how they would like the government to have a full public inquiry.
One told us: "I've seen the CCTV pictures of the four back-packers and I'd like to see more pictures of them jumping on the trains and showing them going on the bus for more evidence."
Another said: "We want the government to step forward and give us more evidence that it was these people who did 7/7 itself."

Well, since Dewsbury's own Mohammad Sidique Khan went to the trouble of videotaping a suicide-note in which he detailed the reasons for his upcoming self-detonation, it's kind of difficult to work out what it would take to punch through the wall of denial surrounding the Islamic world. We mean, here is someone who sits down in front of a camera and announces his murderous intentions to the world. Unless any of Dewsbury's young Muslims intend to run with the idea that Karl Rove had a hand inside Sidique Khan's jacket, working him like a swarthy, bearded glove-puppet, the video admission would be the kind of thing that most sane people would accept as conclusive proof of guilt.

Sadly, Emily Buchanan doesn't see fit to raise this point with any of the kool-aid guzzling Muslims she meets -- Doing so would raise two uncomfortable issues:

If pressed on the subject of Sidique Khan's innocence, many ROPers have a nasty of habit of saying something even more embarrassing about Zionist conspiracies, Bush, MI5. Blah, blah, blah. And let's not forget, the BBC have a longstanding policy with regard to the crazier outpourings of Islamopathy: don't ask, don't tell.
Like most leftists, BBC hacks seem to regard the lobbing of hardball questions at non-whites with a disdain similar to the one the rest of us would feel if such questions were put to a person with downs syndrome. It might appear, to Emily Buchanan and her terminally-PC friends in big media, that the nodding, unquestioning acceptance of whatever those 'little brown people' say shows respect for diversity, but in fact it's all rather patronising.

Perhaps sensing that she's on dangerous ground, Buchanan's next move is straight out of the PC Handbook -- She blames the West:

Many young Muslims can feel disconnected from the rest of British society - torn between strict Islamic rules at home and Western values outside.
At the youth club Asif Patel has worked with local kids for years and has seen them struggle to find a strong identity.
"I think that young British Muslims do face an identity crisis. On the one hand their Asian culture and on the other British culture, and it's extremely important to bridge that gap between the generations, otherwise I feel they are prey to bad ideas and bad influences."

Emily fairly laps this up, of course. In fact, she's so busy fawning over Asif and his kids' 'identity crisis' that she fails to notice the rather obvious flaw in his reasoning. See, if it's self-detonation on public transport that we're trying to put a stop to, then it really is worth making note of the fact that, of the two cultures in question, Muslim and British, the former produces all of the suicide bombers and the latter produces none at all.

But, obviously, if Buchanan drew our attention to this fact, perhaps by putting it to Asif that if he were to encourage a stronger British 'identity' in his young charges fewer of them would grow up to become suicide bombers, she would also run the risk of suggesting that Islamist terrorism is, well, more a problem among Islamists than non-Muslims.

This is just the sort of point Emily Buchanan has absolutely no intention of making ... Though, should anyone feel tempted to believe she avoids doing so out of a misguided desire to simply appear uncritical of Islam, they'd better think again. Buchanan, you see, is actually poised to argue, not for integration, nor moral equivalence between British and Muslim cultures, but, in fact, for an even greater push to Islamise Dewsbury's youth:
Every day after school smaller children attend madrassas (religious schools) and learn the Koran by heart in Arabic. It is a language they do not understand so some are given religious lessons in English too.
But not all madrassas do the extra teaching so many young Muslims end up with a shallow knowledge of their own faith.
The present challenge for Dewsbury's community is whose ideas will exert the most influence over them when they grow up and leave this protected environment.
Certainly, this must be music to the ears of people like Asif Patel and his segregated youth club. And, likewise, it must be just the sort of thing the self-appointed 'community leaders' running Dewsbury like their own private Iran have been waiting to hear. After all, for a (very) short while after 7/7, it really did look as though multiculturalism in Britain might have run onto the skids.

On the strength of Emily Buchanan's efforts here, however, it seems the left's strange relationship with Islamism has emerged as strong as ever from the wreckage of other people's lives.

(A warm welcome to readers of the ever-excellent House of Dumb)

David Cameron: Stuck In The Middle With Tony

2006-01-06T21:35:00.000Z

The British Conservative Party's self-destruction continues apace, with scarcely a day going by when new leader David Cameron doesn't swing past on a giant wrecking-ball with Britain's name painted on it.

Indeed, it seems as though Cameron has decided that the best way to repay the conservative base for electing him as leader is to turn his back on them and pander to every left-wing cause available. Over the past few weeks, Cameron has:

Sucked up to eco-shamen
Promised to buy larger troughs for NHS parasites to stick their snouts in
Made friends in the treason party
Gone soft on terrorists
Agreed to fling our borders wide open
Offered job opportunities to a talentless Oirish tramp
Launched an attack on the most successful post-war leader of his own party

... So right about now is the moment when we here at Rottweiler Puppy declare our undying hatred for the Conservative leader? Maybe start marketing little, Cameron-shaped effigies in wax, shipped complete with complimentary hatpins?

Well, no. We reserve our hatred for the real scumbags of the world: leftists, Islamopaths and other assorted lowlifes. David Cameron might well be a bit (or, indeed, a lot) of a dick, but he isn't an evil man. Point of fact, we're sure Cameron's a perfectly nice guy. The problem, as with the perfectly nice guy who's been running things for the last eight years, is that Cameron, like Blair, is a centrist.

Speaking as social conservatives, we here at Puppy Mansions have two, big, problems with this.

First, and at the risk of stating the obvious, centrists aren't social conservatives. Well. Fine. It's to be assumed there are plenty of socialists out there who object to Blair and Cameron on the grounds that they don't tilt further leftwards. Annoying as these disappointments are, they're also the stuff democracies are made of -- You can either get used to the process or, well, stomp around like overgrown babies conducting Socialist Worker rallies or hawk-assisted foxhunts. Dignified in defeat or dumb-looking: your choice.

However. There's a second problem with Centrism, and this one won't just dissolve because someone at the BBC rejoices about the joys of headline grabbing Dave.

It. Doesn't. Work.

See, we do get that the world would be a better place if everyone shared and shared alike. And we do get that we'd be happier if all human beings would join hands and sing kumbaya.

Only, there are plenty of people who never signed on to Blair's plan to play nicey-nice with each other, and who don't plan on climbing into the centrist sandbox with David Cameron either: what with plotting the destruction of Western Civilisation, they just don't have the time.

So step right up, 'Sir' Iqbal Sacranie, and say your piece:

Sir Iqbal Sacranie, the head of the Muslim Council of Britain, said that same-sex relationships risked damaging the foundations of society, and scientific evidence showed that homosexuality carried high health risks.

No, really, 'sir' Iqbal, tell us how you feel:

The council [that's the MCB, Sacranie's outfit] says it does denounce the Holocaust as what it calls "monstrous cruelty" but rejects the charge that bracketing it with other atrocities diminishes Jewish suffering.
The barbarism of killings in Vietnam, Rwanda, Bosnia and Chechnya should also be marked, it says.

... But nevermind. Maybe all those Centrists the British public love so much can get some help from the judiciary. Here's Lord Hoffman, back in 2004, defending his decision to release Islamopaths onto Britain's streets:

The real threat to the life of the nation, in the sense of a people living in accordance with its traditional laws and political values, comes not from terrorism but from laws such as these.

By way of proving that the July 7th bombings hadn't knocked their Lordships off message, here's another bewigged dictator, pushing for the release of someone else's Islamopath:

A judge in London ruled that Home Secretary Charles Clarke has "no power in law" to deprive Mr Hicks of his citizenship "and so he must be registered".
Mr Hicks' lawyers will now press ministers to make arrangements for him to take the required citizenship oath and pledge.
They will then urge the Home Office to seek his release from the detention camp in Cuba in the same way it has won freedom for all nine other British citizens held there.

No one in Britain voted for any of this. No one outside the strange ideological enclaves inhabited by leftists and Islamists wants any of it, either. And yet, increasingly, we find our society and culture overrun with Sacranies and Hoffmans. When a bomb goes off, they issue a few half-hearted condemnations, pause in their efforts long enough for the dust to settle and the blood to get washed off the walls of central London, then return to the same agendas of Holocaust denial and Islamopath-liberation they were working at previously.

And they're not alone. Modern British life is infested with literally thousands of such people, all pushing one lunatic agenda or another through a vast network of pressure groups and compliant media drones.

One of the principle difficulties with Centrism, whether peddled by Blair or Cameron, is that it completely fails to defend majority culture from this kind of attack. What's more, this isn't a bug -- It's a feature. Centrists actually believe it's possible to create a better world by giving the cranks and extremists access to the levers of power.

Worse, L3 and Islamopaths understand this. In the years since Thatcher fell, they've worked out that they don't actually need to win votes, or carry the majority of Britons with them, or even have any sane person agree with their ravings, in order to advance their agendas at our expense. All that is necessary, in fact, is that the people in government don't have the stomach, or wit, to fight back.

This is something Blair has never grasped -- Now it seems as though the Conservative Party are joining him in the sickening, though well-meaning, appeasement of crazies at our expense.

[For a blow-by-blow account of Cameron's failure, we'd urge readers to drop by at House of Dumb -- Right now, Dave's war upon chocolate oranges is under dissection, and this is definitely not one to miss.]

Free Jack Idema Blogburst

2006-01-04T05:33:00.000Z

One of the most galling aspects of the campaign to free U.S. Special Forces soldier Jack Idema and his compatriots, Brent Bennet and journalist Ed Caraballo, from their illegal detention in Afghanistan has been the attitude of big media toward the case. Over the past weeks, I've written a great deal about the failure of MSM and human rights groups to shine a spotlight on either the abuses Idema and his men have suffered, or the fact that he is being held illegally, following an appeal that overturned the original guilty verdict against him.

Certainly, the fact that the media have failed to report Jack's conviction was overturned, or that the ex-judge he detained was, in fact, linked to senior terrorists, or that the witnesses who accused him of torturing them were proved to have lied -- Certainly, these are the most serious failures in big media's reporting of the case. But they're not the only errors MSM have made.

See, if you do a search for 'Idema' over at the BBC, the $6b news organisation returns a total of 16 hits, all which are filled with references to 'bounty hunters', 'vigilantes' and 'secret prisons'. Over at the Guardian it's the same, with another 16 stories, all concerned with Idema's arrest and trial. This is a pattern that you'll find repeated time and again across almost the whole of MSM. It's as if, prior to his arrest in July 2004, Jack Idema simply didn't exist.

... But why should this be surprising? After all, didn't Jack Idema first come to the media's attention after his arrest? Wasn't the trial in September 2004 the first time anyone outside of the secretive world of Special Ops had heard of him? Well, in a word, no:

In the dusty courtyard outside, Jack, an American special adviser to the Afghan military, treated Afghan injuries, stitching a fresh bullet wound in one man's lower leg. Even without anaesthesia the soldier was thankful for the treatment. As the Green Beret wiped the blood splatters from his face a dozen Afghan fighters looked on, they have never had this kind of support in 23 years of war.

This passage, originally written for United Press International during Operation Anaconda, features an early sighting of Idema, hard at work with Northern Alliance troops as they fought the Taliban in 2001. Note that, at this time, the press weren't questioning Idema's credentials -- He's correctly identified as an 'American special adviser' and 'Green Beret'. Also bear in mind that most of the stories quoted from today have been quietly disappeared from their original locations -- Were it not for the fact that the SuperPatriots have maintained copies of the material, much of it wouldn't be easy to find on the internet today.

A year later, and another UPI report on the near-capture of none other than Osama bin-Laden again places Jack Idema in the thick of the action:

'I immediately suspected Bin Laden was one of them' says Jack, the American advisor to the Afghan Northern Alliance who was first informed about the location of the fugitives on December 18 while he was on a trip to Jalalabad. 'Only the top of Al Qaida would be protected and treated in that way.'

And, from the same piece, Idema's position in the Northern Alliance is detailed:

General Hazrat Ali and Commander Sami Ali worked with Jack for three years, calling him their greatest ally and friend against al-Qaida and the Taliban. It was those fiercely independent yet loyal troops that had followed Jack into the Kut Tangai mountains after approval from General Mohammed Fahim, Minister of Defense, in search of bin Laden. This was the last time Osama bin Laden was ever spotted.

And again. This time around, UPI are reporting on Idema's involvement in the rescue of high-ranking Afghan officials from a terrorist attack:

"Jack," as the special advisor to the Afghan military is known, managed to rescue the President of Afghanistan's Ariana Airlines, Robullah Amain, who had escaped from the mob and was surrounded in a terminal office. Along with seven Afghan commandos, Jack rescued Amain, Haji Timor the airport manager and five others and escorted them to safety.
An ISAF spokesmen claimed that a small team of British soldiers supposedly helped to save the national airline executive from certain death.
Ariana President Robullah Amain confirmed that in reality, it was an American Green Beret and his Afghan soldiers.

And, finally, a report on the assistance Idema brought to victims of the Nahrin earthquake in 2002:

Wearing a khaki-and-brown, U.S. flag patch on his shoulder, sporting a beard and carrying an assault rifle, Jack drove through Nahrin in a local van with a translator asking people if they needed help. He'd already bandaged more than 30 children by the afternoon and used up five boxes of field dressings - and quite a few happy-face bandages.
Jack, who began visiting the village late last week, stopped in one tent Saturday to see a baby who was born while her mother, Sharifa, was buried under the rubble.
Eight months pregnant when the Monday evening quake hit, Sharifa crouched for an hour on her hands and knees under the rubble to protect her newborn until they were rescued. Sharifa asked Jack, who also treated her back injury, to name the daughter: He chose "Suzzana," or "new beginning" in the Dari language [Suzzanaya Viktoria as her full name].
"I thought I was dead and I thought the child was dead for sure," the mother said as Jack tenderly examined the infant to check an eye infection he had treated the day before.

So let's put all this together. Far from being a 'mysterious figure' (as the BBC called him at the time of his trial), Jack Idema is a man who was:

Well known to the media during the course of his work in Afghanistan.
Was repeatedly referred to as an 'American special advisor' and an 'advisor to the Northern Alliance' by the media who later denied all knowledge of him.
Was known to Generals in the Northern Alliance who described Idema as their 'greatest ally and friend against al-Qaida and the Taliban'.
Led the hunt for bin-Laden.
Led Afghan commandos in a rescue of senior Afghan officials.
Is a hero to the ordinary Afghans he rescued from their earthquake-devastated villages

So why, when the BBC are called on to write up a profile of Jack Idema, do they introduce him in the following way:

Idema always claimed to be a defender of American values, a patriotic ex-special forces soldier working on the front-line of the US war on terror, with the full backing of the Pentagon.
There are plenty of people who never believed him. Others say they did - and now regret it.

And why do so many of the search results for 'Idema' only refer to material from the point of his 2004 arrest onwards?

Well, Idema's arrest and trail made for a good news item; exactly the kind of thing the post-Abu Gharib media were looking for. Here, they had the story of a 'rogue' U.S. soldier 'torturing innocent' Afghans in a 'private jail'. To many left-wing journalists, this must have seemed like a gift from heaven.

But here's the thing: if MSM had told the full story, the one detailing Jack's hunt bin-Laden, his service with the Northern Alliance during Operation Anaconda, his rescue of government officials, his bandaging injured Afghan children as they cheered his name -- If MSM had told that story, well, then, people mightn't have been so quick to swallow the line they were being fed about Idema hanging prisoners upside down in his (non-existent) basement.

More to the point, people might be more willing to listen to those of us who are pleading for Jack Idema and his men to get a fair hearing today.

So what can we do? Well, anyone reading this with their own blog can sign up for the weekly Free Jack Idema Blogburst by emailing Cao or Rottweiler Puppy for details. I'd urge everyone to do this, as we're still terribly short on takers. If you want to know more about the story, Cao's Blog has a large section devoted to Jack Idema. There's also a timeline here, and, of course, a huge amount of information is available over at SuperPatriots, without whose work none of us would have learned about Jack's story.

Finally, PLEASE NOTE: The SuperPatriots and Jack images on this site are used with WRITTEN COPYRIGHT PERMISSION and any use by any third party is subject to legal action by SuperPatriots.US

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Happy New Year From The Bishop Of Lichfield And The BBC

2006-01-02T09:18:00.000Z

Fighting a culture war against leftists often feels a little like dealing with a particularly nasty infestation of termites. It isn't so much that any, individual, leftist is a problem (this is, after all, the political movement whose best efforts at statesmanlike figureheads are creeps like Hugo Chavez and George Galloway), as the eagerness of leftism's foot-soldiers to attach their greedy mandibles to society's infrastructure, munch-munch-munching away until something essential collapses.

In Britain, one of the left's prime targets has been the CofE (Church of England -- that's our state church, Anglicans, Episcopalians, for the benefit of non-British readers). After decades spent grating away at a once-great institution, this is where we've ended up:

A senior Church of England Bishop has railed against Western governments 'putting themselves outside the law' in the war against terror.
The Bishop of Lichfield, the Right Reverend Jonathan Gledhill, used his New Year message to condemn governments for their treatment of terror suspects.
He said "extra-territorial prison camps" and controversy surrounding the possible use of torture was "shocking".

Now granted, the Bishop of Lichfield is one of the loopier elements within the CofE. Yet. You can't help but feel some sympathy for any actual Christians who might have strayed within ranting distance as Party Chairman Gledhill let fly with this wholly political diatribe against rendition. And there's more:

"Is it a true a neighbour with a grudge could accuse us of having a link with a terror cell and we could be dragged out of bed without warning, taken abroad, left to rot for months without being told the evidence against us and be interrogated until we confess?"

Well, since the good Bishop asks, no. It isn't true ... Leastways, not so far as British subjects are concerned -- As the state of our current anti-terror laws stand, a bearded crazy accused of running a terror cell can expect to 'rot' in a nice, warm cell for no more than 28 days before being released due to lack of evidence. Meanwhile, the unfortunate neighbour, grudging or just plain concerned, will have already have been up on charges of Islamophobically-aggravated thoughtcrime.

But, perhaps we're being unfair to Bishop Gledhill. Maybe he's just the sort of harmless do-gooder who'd rather have them singing Kumbyah than Onward Christian Soldiers. Well, alright. There has always been a certain amount of ... um ... discussion between the people who feel that putting on the whole armour of God is a metaphor for the welfare state and those of us who think it means we get to waterboard the Islamopaths we don't take out with our RPGs. However. This isn't quite the debate that Bishop Gledhill had in mind:

But he warned that even though organisations such as al-Qaeda were dangerous there was an even greater threat.
"We might become the thing we hate - killing the innocent, alienating people of good will, imposing our will wrongly on other nations."

It is, of course, at this point that Gledhill slides from Christian-but-naive all the way down to a position that can best be described as sub-ethical. Point of fact, what he's engaging in here is moral equivalence of the very worst kind -- Is he really arguing that there is little or no difference between a coalition soldier handing out candy to Iraqi children and the Islamofascist who walks up to him and self-detonates?

This isn't simply a dumbed-down version of Christianity, nor a naive idealism. What Gledhill is presenting us with is the argument that if one resists evil, one becomes it.

It's a good thing, then, that not all new year messages from the leaders of Britain's faiths are so conflicted when it comes to standing up to Allah's little helpers:

Sir Jonathan Sacks, the Chief Rabbi, fears that a "tsunami of anti-Semitism" is threatening to engulf parts of the world.
He said: "I am very scared by [it] and I'm very scared that more protests have not been delivered against it, but this [anti-Semitism] is part of the vocabulary of politics in certain parts of the world."

Now, granted, Sir Jonathan doesn't actually use the M-word. But. Still. It's pretty clear that the 'certain parts of the world' he's referring to aren't the ones with majority Buddhist populations ... Clear, that is, so long as you're not getting your news via a certain national broadcaster the leftist termites have also been gnawing at:

Globalisation had led some people to wrongly see Israel as the cause of all the world's conflicts, he told BBC Radio 4's Sunday Programme.

... So the fact that we have cheap air travel and import clothing on from China means that everyone's started drinking the anti-Zionist kool-aid? Well, no. In fact what Sir Jonathan said (and this is something the Beeboid doing this write-up really ought to know, considering the Chief Rabbi gave his interview on BBC radio) was that conflicts around the world had taken on a global dimension, as evidenced by 9/11 and 7/7.

Though, if you thought the BBC's airbrushing of 'global jihad' into 'globalisation' was a somewhat creative re-hashing of Sir Jonathan's actual remarks, you haven't seen anything yet. This, from the Telegraph:

"If, God forbid, one could imagine a world in which the state of Israel did not exist and, I repeat, God forbid, then not one of the world's conflicts would be changed by one millimetre - there would still be conflict in Chechnya, in Ossetia, in Indonesia, in the Philippines. So to make this [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict - where the two sides have worked now for 12 years in a process of peace - the epicentre of global politics is not merely wrong … but it is also quite troubling."

And now this, from the BBC:

Islamic militants have used Israel's treatment of Palestinians to rally support for their violent campaigns.

Hmm. So '12 years in a process of peace' translates as 'Israel's treatment of Palestinians', does it? Because most people would take the view that the BBC are actually reporting the exact opposite of what Sir Jonathan said. Well, war is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength. We suppose.

Really, though, these two stories, dismaying though they are, do go to illustrate the effect leftists have on the institutions they overrun: give them religion, and they'll invert morality; give them the media, and they'll invert the truth.

(Cross-posted at The Wide Awakes)
(A very warm welcome to readers of USS Neverdock)

BBC: Sugar, Sugar, You Are My Taliban

2005-12-31T20:26:00.000Z

The BBC were in jubilant mood the other day, rejoicing that yet another crazed Islamopath may soon be walking through the gates of Guantanamo Bay and onto British soil.

Now, granted, this statement might raise a few eyebrows on account of the fact that L3 spent the entire first half of the WOT pissing and moaning so loudly about the 'plight' of British head-hackers in Gitmo that all of the scumbags were eventually released back onto Britain's streets. Indeed, one might think it not unreasonable that the U.S.'s not actually holding any British Islamopaths would present something a problem for any human rights hustlers attempting to have them released.

But, no. L3 are nothing if not inventive in their attempts to undermine the WOT:

The Home Office has lodged an appeal against a High Court ruling that an Australian man imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay has a right to British citizenship.
David Hicks, 30, whose mother was born in Britain, was detained in Afghanistan in 2002 and has since been held by the US at Camp X-Ray in Cuba.
Two weeks ago a judge decided the home secretary had no power to stop him receiving a British passport.

Now, it must be obvious to even the BBC that Britain's offering safe-haven to terrorists on a multi-generational level is never going to be a popular move. For one thing, and as 7/7 proved, we have enough of a problem with the crazed jihadists we grow ourselves without the need to import any from abroad. For another, there's the point that this sort of thing never seems to work in the opposite direction -- Imagine the number of blood-vessels leftists would pop if anyone suggested expelling Islamopaths on the grounds that their parents weren't born in Britain. Well, exactly.

Perhaps mindful of all this, the BBC are helpful enough to furnish readers with a photo of David Hicks:

But, aw, doesn't he look cute? ... And young. So what happened? Did those awful Amerikkkans get confused while marching around Afghanistan and arrest a 14-year-old Aussie backpacker by mistake? Does little David miss his mommy? And do the guards at Camp X-Ray let him play his Radiohead CDs?

Well, although we'll never know the full horror of what Hicks has endured in Gitmo (Harry Potter readings, lap dances, lemon chicken), we do know he converted to Islam and left Australia back in 1999 in order to fulfil a lifelong ambition of murdering innocent Indian troops and civilians in Kashmir. Obviously pleased with his work for them, in 2000 the Kashmir head-hackers sent Hicks, with letters of introduction, to Afghanistan. While there, Hicks received training from al-Qaeda in weapons, explosives, land mines, marksmanship, ambush, camouflage, intelligence techniques, use of assault and sniper rifles, rappelling, kidnapping and assassination.

Obviously, all this healthy, outdoors activity is all well and good, but we're sure David's (British-born) mommy will be pleased to know her baby boy didn't let his schoolwork slide -- Hicks also studied information collection, intelligence, and the Islamic theories of jihad and martyrdom. He must have done pretty well at these, since, during this time, he caught the eye of none other than Osama bin-Laden, who personally requested Hicks translate al-Qaeda training manuals from Arabic into English.

Of course, it's at this point that the photograph of Hicks provided by the BBC begins to look a little, um, at odds? with the biographical details (none of which the BBC bother to provide either).

Never ones to allow an inconsistency go un-ironed, then, may we present a more recent photograph of the new, 'improved' David Hicks:

This, in fact, is the man who was captured while fighting for the Taliban in November 2001. He's also one of the most well-trained Islamic terrorists on the planet, and, if L3 and the BBC get their way, he could soon be moving in next door to you.

(Hat-tip The Lone Voice)

Free Jack Idema Blogburst

2005-12-28T17:10:00.000Z

Although we're getting a little now, Christmas in Britain passed without so much as a dusting of snow. Not so in Afghanistan, as we can see from this photograph, taken from inside the Pulacharke prison compound. The mountains, in particular, give a nice, Christmassy feel to the scene, as do the three or four inches of white stuff covering the ground.

In fact, the only things that really spoil this vista are the watchtowers, the prison bars and the knowledge that, behind them, are three American patriots -- Special Forces soldier Jack Idema, his right-hand man, Brent Bennet, and journalist Ed Caraballo.

Jack, Brent and Ed were originally sentenced to a decade in prison after a chaotic show trail in September 2004. Their judges were members of the Taliban regime who'd crept back into the new Afghan government.

More worrying, perhaps, the bearded crazies were assisted by groups within the FBI and U.S. State Department, who disappeared evidence and collaborated with the men who tortured Jack, Brent and Ed. Since the trail, there have been numerous assassination attempts mounted against Idema and his men by the Taliban and al-Qaeda scumbags they are being held with.

Most disturbing of all, however, is the fact that all three men were declared innocent after a retrial almost exactly a year ago. Now, granted, there are bound to be some differences between our legal systems and the one in Afghanistan, but we're pretty sure one thing they do have in common is the notion that locking up completely innocent people isn't acceptable ...

... So why are Jack and his men still incarcerated? For answers, we need to look at the way the War On Terror is actually playing out in Afghanistan, and to understand the extent to which many of the players in the FBI and U.S. State Department have edged away from killing and capturing Islamofascists, and back toward policies of appeasement and (false) stability. This has meant, at least for the State Department and the Karzai government, that men like Jack Idema became something of an inconvenience, hunting, arresting and killing the very terrorists they were foolishly attempting to broker deals with. In an effort to push their flawed agendas, then, sections of the U.S. government have seen to it that Idema and his men stay behind bars.

In essence, this means that Jack Idema is a political prisoner, who, bizarrely, is being held by America in order to prevent him hunting down and killing the very people who masterminded 9/11.

And, yes, you really do need to read that, last sentence over several times in order for its full implications to sink in. Four years after that terrible, September day, instead of bringing the sword of justice to the bearded crazies responsible for 3000 murders, we're bringing injustice to the men whose mission it is to hunt down the bin Ladens of this world and make them pay for what they did.

And, make no mistake, this is exactly what Jack Idema intends to do. Here he is, in an interview he gave a couple of months ago, laying down the principles upon which the WOT should be fought:

Americans now are saying let's have this peace and appeasement and all of this -- listen. Remember about this? People forget about the fact that people were diving out windows on 9/11 to avoid being burned to death. This is a war. War is a war of attrition -- that means you kill the enemy. You don't make peace with them, you don't make nice with them, you don't take 'em in for a steak dinner- you kill 'em. And believe me–these people deserve to die. They are the worst terrorists on the face of the earth. Look what they did on 9/11 and that is only one small part of what they want to do to us.

[You can hear the whole thing here.]

In the meantime, and while the head-hackers tuck into those steak dinners courtesy of the State Department, Jack Idema and his men are subjected to the petty malice of U.S. Consul Adrienne Harchick. Adrienne (or 'Addie' to the friends she doesn't deserve to have) has denied Jack and his men access to clean drinking water, refused to allow them to send hand-made gifts to their families back home, and even went so far as to seize 21 Christmas packages sent to Jack, Brent and Ed via regular Afghan post. Adrienne's lame excuse for this, last, piece of spite was that Christmas gifts 'violate the Muslim religion'. (This, even though Jack's many Muslim friends in the Northern Alliance have offered to deliver the presents to him themselves.)

But. This intolerable situation might, finally, be coming to an end. Last week, the Northern Alliance-backed Yunis Qanooni took the reigns of power in the Afghan Parliament, and, unlike the appeasing weasel Karzai, intends to prosecute the war against terrorists hard. We must also hope that Qanooni resolves to release Jack and his men so they can help in this endeavour.

Because here's the thing: someone like Jack Idema is doing no good looking at the Afghan mountains through the bars of a prison cell. He needs to be in those mountains, finishing the fight al-Qaeda started with us back in September, 2001.

Anyone wishing to join the Free Jack Idema Blogburst should email either Cao or Rottweiler Puppy for details.

Finally, PLEASE NOTE: The SuperPatriots and Jack images on this site are used with WRITTEN COPYRIGHT PERMISSION and any use by any third party is subject to legal action by SuperPatriots.US

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Jack Idema And The SAS

2005-12-26T18:54:00.000Z

One of the most disturbing things about the case of illegally-imprisoned U.S. Special Forces soldier Jack Idema is the extent to which the media have either lied outright, or shown no interest beyond reporting whatever information they were fed by official sources.

Hence, the line MSM have always stuck to is that Idema's work in Afghanistan was illegal and unsanctioned, and that Jack himself was, at best, a bounty hunter with a mediocre record of service in the U.S. military. At various points in time, journalists have referred to Idema as 'immature', 'unremarkable', 'unmotivated', 'a loser', and claimed that the only active service he saw was a radio operator.

However. The SuperPatriots, a group of Special Ops personnel who've spearheaded the campaign to get Idema released, have compiled a wealth of information that flat-out refutes the MSM's attempts to smear Jack. We talked about some of this last week, particularly concerning the fiction that Idema operated in Afghanistan without official sanction. This time around (and with huge thanks to the work SuperPatriots have done compiling a page dedicated to Idema's work with the SAS), we're going to focus on Jack's credentials as a soldier, and, in particular, on his relationship with Britain's own SAS.

For the benefit of overseas readers who aren't entirely familiar with this regiment, the SAS (Special Air Service) was formed in 1941 by Colonel Sir A. David Stirling, DSO, OBE (then a Captain), and became the template on which other countries built their own special forces. Although Stirling's idea seems unremarkable in today's world, back in 1941, the notion of a small, super-elite group of soldiers, trained to take on the kind of missions which would be impossible for regular troops to carry out was a new one. Yet, Stirling's vision was, in essence, a very simple one: recruit the best.

What this means, of course, is that any soldier selected for the SAS, the U.S.'s Green Berets or Delta Force, or any of the other elite groups around the world, will have had to go a long way to proving themselves as soldiers of excellence prior to being considered for the selection process ...

... Though, to listen to MSM tell it, such groups also keep a few places open for immature, unmotivated losers. Ah-huh.

This, at least according to many journalists, is where Jack Idema comes in, earning his Green Beret at the age of eighteen, completing Special Forces training a year later, and the Green Beret's equivalent of the Navy SEAL course at age twenty. Though the average age for these accomplishments is 28, plainly Idema was rushed through on the grounds that what one of the most elite groups of soldiers in the world really needed more of were 'unremarkable' radio operators.

Of course, by this time news of Idema's immaturity and lack of motivation had spread to Britain and, again if we accept the smears of journalists, the SAS wanted in.

This is Idema with Colonel Paddy Baker, who made a name for himself as an SAS Commando during the battles to turn back communist gorillas in Oman, 1964 -- Here, Idema is instructing Baker in the use of the HK MP-5SD3 Submachinegun (then a secret, prototype weapon). Idema ran the SAS course in the weapon's use, and as a result of this, the regiment switched over from the L2A3 Sterling SMG to the HK MP-5. This was the weapon used by the SAS when they stormed the Iranian embassy in 1981 -- Doubtless, what helped persuade the SAS to trust their lives to the weapon was the 'unremarkable' 'immaturity' of the man instructing them in its use.

... At which point, it really is worth putting the sarcasm on hold in order to ask how on earth any of the journalists attempting to smear someone like Idema could think it would be possible to suppress so much hard evidence? Are MSM really so clueless about the military (and about their readers' knowledge of this topic) that they seriously believe they could sell us on the idea that someone could have accomplished what Jack Idema has accomplished, and yet be 'immature', 'unremarkable', 'unmotivated', 'a loser'? Really, this is an insult to our intelligence ...

... Which is bad enough, only, whenever journalists try these tricks out on our military, what they seem to have trouble grasping is that they're not just insulting Jack Idema as a man, but also the regiments and individual heroes who have vouched for him.

See, here's the thing: Paddy Baker clearly had a great deal of respect for Idema's abilities -- He described Jack as 'the finest young Green Beret [I have] ever worked with'. Indeed, Baker later invited Idema back to instruct SAS 22 in hostage rescue and close-quarter battle. Here are Idema and Baker again. This time Jack is placing a STABO extraction harness (which Idema helped design) on Baker:

On another occasion, while Idema was working with the Regiment, the following occurred:

General [Sir] Peter de la Billiere, MC, walked into the middle of a large group of SAS and SF troops, walked up to one man, and personally thanked Idema for a job he did with the SAS. General Billiere had previously been Commander 22 SAS from 1972-76, he was then a Lieutenant Colonel, then became Colonel as commander of 21, 22,23, and then overall Special Operations commander for the UK as a General officer.

You can read more about General Sir Peter de la Billiere's remarkable career here, but, suffice to say, he and Paddy Baker are two of the most fearsome British warriors of the post-war period. Together, they helped shape the SAS into the legendary fighting-force it is today.

To suggest that two such men would be incapable of assessing Jack Idema's qualities, both as a soldier and a as man, is absurd bordering on insulting.

More to the point, since the SAS trusted Jack Idema to instruct them in battle techniques and the weaponry they carry, the MSM attempts to smear Jack also act as smears against the professionalism of the British Army's most elite regiment. This would be insulting if it weren't so laughable.

And, whatever MSM would have us believe, this trust wasn't misplaced. Idema never forgot about his friends in the SAS, as he proved many years later when it came to negotiating book-royalties during the hunt for bin Laden:

When Jack agreed to do the book [Task Force Dagger] and give his pictures to McMillan, Jack made sure the McMillan publisher's contract stated that the SAS Regimental fund would get a percentage of the book's income forever to use for the families of fallen SAS soldiers.
Jack was so concerned about the SAS' widows and their families that he fought a lengthy battle with the British publisher insisting that the royalty checks to the 22 Regimental Fund go directly to the Regiment from the publisher in case something ever happened to him.

Well, something did happen to Idema, and he needs help. Right now, Jack and his men are being held without access to mail or clean drinking water. If any British servicemen reading this in Afghanistan think they could help out by getting supplies to Jack and his men, please contact SuperPatriots.

What the rest of us need to do is get the truth about Jack out to as many people as possible, and to do that, the more bloggers who sign on to the weekly Free Jack Idema Blogburst, the better. So far, we only have a handful of takers, and desperately need more bloggers willing to either write something once a week or cross-post from either Cao's Blog or Rottweiler Puppy. If you need to know more about this issue, this link will take you to the section of Cao's site which covers everything in great detail. You should also stop by at SuperPatriots, who've been bashing away at this issue for longer than any of us, and without whom we wouldn't have ever heard the truth. If you decide to join, email Cao or Rottweiler Puppy.

Finally, PLEASE NOTE: The SuperPatriots and Jack images on this site are used with WRITTEN COPYRIGHT PERMISSION and any use by any third party is subject to legal action by SuperPatriots.US

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Best Christmas Wishes From The BBC

2005-12-24T18:08:00.000Z

Sixty-five years ago, the British Broadcasting Corporation made it possible for these words to reach the ears of the world:

June 4th 1940

We shall go on to the end, we shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our Island, whatever the cost may be, we shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender, and even if, which I do not for a moment believe, this Island or a large part of it were subjugated and starving, then our Empire beyond the seas, armed and guarded by the British Fleet, would carry on the struggle, until, in God's good time, the New World, with all its power and might, steps forth to the rescue and the liberation of the old.

Apparently unaware of how far they've fallen, today the BBC are inviting comments on the following topic:

December 24th, 2005

What do you think of politicians' visits to Iraq?
Tony Blair and Donald Rumsfeld both made Christmas visits to soldiers in Iraq this week. Do trips like these boost morale, or are they just photo opportunites?
The British Prime Minister and the US Defence Secretary each took the chance to announce that troop numbers would be cut next year.
Mr Blair praised the soldiers' efforts: "I just want you to know how grateful we are for the work you are doing here."
Do you think the trips boost troops' morale or are they just political stunts for people back home?

Well -- Hey! -- We here at Rottweiler Puppy have never been ones to ignore an honest search for answers. Accordingly, we'd like to inform the nattering leftists at the BBC that no one here gives a damn for their stuck-up, weak-kneed sneering.

Because, here's the thing: there are millions of ordinary British men and women who do appreciate the bravery and sacrifice of the men serving our country in Iraq. More than half of our country supported you when you went in, and we support you now.

Especially now.

While we sit down to Christmas dinner with our families, we'll think of you.
While we suffer through the crap on TV, we'll think of you.
While we glower at the gazillion turkey sandwiches ahead, we'll think of you.

Whatever BBC-scum suggest, you're not just pieces on some political chessboard, and you're not forgotten.

Millions of us know what it is you're going through and respect you.

Millions, silently, understand.

Merry Christmas.

BBC: Saddam Claus Is Coming To Town

2005-12-24T00:11:00.000Z

As the quagmire in Iraq dries out faster than the purple ink on 11 million fingers, readers might feel moved to something close to pity for the Beeboid minions forced to watch all their hopes and dreams for the country collapse into a stable democracy. But, wait. Just when you thought al-Beeb couldn't sink any lower than fawning over head-chopping child-murderers, it seems as though they've found themselves a new playmate:

The trial of Saddam: Justice or theatre?

Of course, even the BBC's little, trained minions can't get away with asking such a shamelessly biased question. Accordingly, they've subcontracted their leftism to one, Dr. Gerry Simpson, who made friends with the Beeboids by asking questions like 'was the Iraq war legal?'. So, yes, folks, it's yet another one of those BBC 'opinion pieces' -- You know, the ones that always seem to end up expressing sentiments that are slanted so far to the left that even the denizens of White City fear they wouldn't be able to get away with them:

The US marine who decided not to shoot the dishevelled figure emerging from his hole in Tikrit at the end of 2003, nor to lob a grenade into that hole, set in train a sequence of events that may have profound ramifications for the future of Iraq.

Well, the guy (pictured in the BBC's article) dragging Saddam out of that hole wasn't, in fact, a Marine at all. His name was 'Samir', and he was working for the U.S. Army as an interpreter. Now, granted, the good Dr. probably knows as much about the military as we do about what it takes to be a quivering, effeminate leftist. But, still -- You're off to a really great start here, Gerry!

The trial of Saddam will be remembered either as the greatest trial in recent history (to paraphrase Norman Birkett's description of Nuremberg) or as a show trial that discredited the new Iraqi authorities, and the US invasion and occupation, as well as jeopardising the prospects for peace and the rule of law in Iraq.

Well, you'd certainly think that leftists would know all about show trails ... but, no. Apparently the good Dr. hasn't grasped that what constitutes one of these is the complete innocence of the people standing in the dock. This is the real distinction between Nuremberg and the antics of Stalin's thought police -- That while the allies were prosecuting genuine mass-murderers, over in Moscow, the KGB were fitting-up innocent men and women in order to demonstrate the 'supremacy' of the state.

Given the obviousness of this distinction, then, it's worth wondering why leftists everywhere are pushing this line about the 'legitimacy' of Saddam's trial? A clue as to the answer is found in Gerry Simpson's telling remark that the trial could 'discredit the new Iraqi authorities'. How so? After all, when one considers that said authorities are credited by 70% of voting Iraqis, the court's failure would have to be profound indeed to achieve such a reversal.

So why is Gerry Simpson so keen to pour cold water over the whole process?

Nuremberg was very much an international effort. In the Balkans, the Security Council came together to establish an international court with international judges applying international law.
In Saddam's case, the trial is being held under Iraqi law before Iraqi judges. There are potential costs to doing it this way.
The impartiality of the judges (many of them victims of the old regime) will remain in doubt, the level of expertise available is somewhat diminished, and the legitimating force of international law will be absent.

Yes, it's our old friend the 'legitimating force of international law'. This, of course, is the same 'international law' that would have left Saddam and his psycho sons running Iraq back in 2003, but for the 'illegal' actions of the U.S.-led coalition.

More to the point, though, it's difficult to see precisely why Simpson feels the only way to judge a murderer is via a panel of Euroweenies in an international court. After all, courts in every country, including Iraq, manage to do just this every day of the year. In this context, it seems unclear as to why Simpson thinks a 'regular' murderer can get justice in Iraq, but not a hyper-killer like Saddam? Surely, if Iraqi justice means anything at all, this is demonstrated by its ability to try the high as well as the low; the powerful along with the powerless. Indeed, there are plenty of us who would argue that this is precisely what 'justice' means.

So what's going on? Well, maybe what's eating at the transnational crowd is that Saddam Hussein is the big fish America wouldn't let them hook. See, in order to sell people on the idea that the only real justice is available outside of sovereign nation-states, you need a steady supply of people to do your justice on.

Back in the Clinton years, Gerry and his cohorts were busy in Rwanda and the Balkans, and it really had begun to look as though they were close to convincing everyone that crimes against humanity had to be handled (or mishandled, as was the case in Rwanda) at a super-national level. Iraq has changed all that. At a stroke, Gerry Simpson can see the illusion of U.N. power being rolled back as ordinary Iraqis take charge of their own lives.

This is something he doesn't seem to like one bit:

Is it possible to achieve justice in the context of an ongoing civil war and foreign occupation? War crimes trials usually occur at the end of a period of trauma when whole societies are ready to face a period of reckoning in the absence of violence and extra-judicial retribution.
Iraq is not in this position.
It is a country suffering great strife, and this has begun to infect the proceedings themselves. The killing of two defence lawyers and the pervading sense of chaos inside the courtroom augurs badly for the success of the trial.

Well, clearly it would be better for everyone if Iraq were a less dangerous place. But. Still. It's hard not to feel there's something quite condescending in Simpson's attitude to Iraqis -- They're little people, and what with their messy country and messy courtroom practices, really not up to the job of dispensing justice to the Euroweenie standard.

Though, and for all his talk about the need for justice to be seen to be done, Gerry Simpson is careful to steer us away from the fact that it's the transnational brigades who would fail most conspicuously in this respect. See, sooner or later, and for all his grandstanding, Saddam Hussein will be found guilty. When that happens, the Iraqi legal system, imperfect though it may be, will likely impose a just sentence, and Saddam will pay for all the lives he took with his own life.

Since the crowd running things at the international court don't even have the ability to impose a death sentence on those they convict, all Gerry Simpson can really offer is scrupulously fair trail, but no justice at all at its conclusion.

Put that way, it begins to look as those 'chaotic' Iraqis have a far better grasp of how to dispense justice than anyone at the U.N., or the BBC, is willing to give them credit for.

(Cross-posted at The Wide Awakes)
(A very warm, inclusive, and non-festive welcome to readers of The Dick List, whose sense of humour doesn't strike anyone here as 'sophomoric' in the least. DISCLAIMER: We here at Rottweiler Puppy can't get through the Mr. Creosote sketch from The Meaning Of Life without laughing up half a lung. So. Go figure.)

Free Jack Idema Blogburst: Week Six

2005-12-21T14:23:00.000Z

One of the most pervasive, not to mention damaging, rumours MSM have circulated about illegally imprisoned U.S. Special Forces soldier Jack Idema is that he's nothing more than a wild-eyed fantasist. Idema, it's said, was a bounty hunter who entered Afghanistan in order to play soldier.

Here's the BBC, at the time of Jack's trial, doing its level best to push this absolutely false assessment of Idema:

Idema always claimed to be a defender of American values, a patriotic ex-special forces soldier working on the front-line of the US war on terror, with the full backing of the Pentagon. There are plenty of people who never believed him. Others say they did - and now regret it.
[...]
Nato, too, says it was duped by Idema and his American associates into thinking they were serving US soldiers. The alliance agreed to send search teams into buildings for him. "Their credibility was such that with their uniforms, their approach, our people believed they were what they said they were," said a spokesman for Nato in Afghanistan. "It was a mistake."

As we've said before, in order to swallow this kind of nonsense, you'd have to seriously believe that in order to operate inside a coalition-controlled war-zone, all a person has to do is slip on a pair of sunglasses and talk the right kind of talk. Is that credible?

Well, alright, we do hear about spectacularly successful con-artists who manage to trick their way past all kinds of otherwise sensible people. Moreover, the way the BBC tell it here, you could be forgiven for concluding that Idema was somehow a 'mysterious' figure on the very periphery of the WOT. So, yes, it's arguable that anyone relying on MSM for information on Idema might come away with doubts as to who they should believe.

This is something that many of the people who hung Idema out to dry are relying on. The FBI and State Department agents who are keeping Jack in prison hope that the misinformation they've spread concerning Idema will serve to suppress the truth. This seems to have been the original plan: that Idema would meet a sticky end behind bars, and no further questions would be asked.

Unfortunately for these people, Jack Idema hasn't proved so easy to get rid of -- After numerous prison 'riots' by Islamonazi inmates aimed at assassinating him along with his men, Idema is still very much alive.

While this goes to show that no one would make money betting on a rag-tag bunch of Taliban crazies against a Green Beret, the 'no questions asked' part of the FBI/State-Department plan to erase Idema from the face of the earth is working out just fine -- Maybe head-hackers can't be relied upon, but it's an absolute certainty that MSM will never voluntarily retract a story that smears the military in order to print one that shows a decent and honourable soldier in a positive light.

So. The job of getting the truth out is down to bloggers and a group of Special Ops personnel in contact with Idema, the SuperPatriots.

Let's get to it:

Here we see Idema leading a column of Afghan Ministry of Interior troops in 2002. Doubtless, it was the sunglasses and gun that fooled the large number of government soldiers into following him. After all, we're sure this kind of thing happens all the time. You know, an American guy turns up at the barracks and everyone just follows him out for a quick romp across the desert. Why, Idema must have felt like a kind of heavily-armed Pied Piper. Hmm.

Here's Jack again. Flushed with success at tricking those Afghan soldiers, this time around he's convincing German ISAF medics that he's rescued a little girl from the Nahrin earthquake.

And again. Here, Jack convinces a ordinary Afghans to receive aid shipments from him in Logar.

Apparently not content with working these miraculous deceptions on credulous Iraqi and German troops, this time Jack's convinced top Afghan Corps Commanders of his legitimacy. From left to right: 1- Afghan CIA officer (required to be cropped out of picture before publication), 2) General Wassiq - Mazar, 3) Jack, 4) General Daoud - Kunduz & Taliqon, 5) General Atta - Mazar, 6, General Hazrat Ali - Jalalabad, 7) General Gulhaider- Southern Front command. Apparently, the military top brass on show here all believed they were meeting to coordinate Idema's operations throughout Afghanistan. It's a good thing the chattering classes who run the BBC were around to put them straight!

... So, to recap: MSM would have us believe that, over the course of three, full years, Jack Idema ran completely unauthorised military and relief operations inside Afghanistan. During this period, he persuaded large numbers of government troops to follow him into battle, relief authorities to trust him to rescue disaster victims and hand out aid, and top Afghan Generals to meet with him for anti-terrorist strategy sessions.

Question: Does the whole Idema-as-fraud line MSM run with still seem plausible? At all, we mean?

But wait, because Afghanistan really is only a small part of Jack Idema's long and highly distinguished military career. Aside from actively serving his country in Thailand, Panama, Haiti, Central America, and Eastern Europe, Idema has spent a lifetime excelling in every aspect of his military career:

This "unmotivated" "loser" received his Green Beret at 18 and graduated the SF course at 19- this is unheard of. Is their ANY other person in the world that has ever achieved this? Idema went to SFUWOC, the Green Berets' equivalent to Navy SEAL school at 20 (average age is 28). He went on to become a Master Diver, a Senior Open Water Instructor, a Master Instructor, and an Instructor Trainer. He was jumpmaster at 24, a Counter-terrorist HRT team leader at 27, having graduated the most classified counter-terrorist school in the world in 1981. Idema later evaluated the course in 1983, and rewrote their curriculum at age 27. He trained and advised the British SAS at 25 years old.

Here's a photo of Jack working with the legendary Colonel Patty Baker, who said of Idema that he 'was the finest young Green Beret he had ever worked with and invited Idema to work at SAS Headquarters in Hereford in the mid-80's':

For any overseas readers who are unfamiliar with Britain's SAS (Special Air Service), they're the absolute cream of the British Army, the elite. What's more, Idema's work with them involved teaching hostage rescue and close quarter battle -- Whatever the BBC's (unnamed) NATO spokesman might say about Jack's work in Afghanistan, it should be pretty damn clear that it takes more than a gun, a pair of shades and a winning personality to wind up instructing the SAS. (SuperPatriots are currently working on a piece detailing Idema's work with the regiment, and we'll certainly keep everyone appraised of that just as soon as it appears.)

Want more? Here you go:

The young man getting shooting lessons from Jack is none other than Ronald Reagan Jr. This picture was taken in 1985, when Idema was working for the U.S. Counter-Terrorist Group. Ronald's father, meanwhile, held an ... um ... senior position in the American Government.

So, seriously, the cockroaches in MSM who've been peddling the myth that Idema is a fantasist and a conman have a great deal of explaining to do ... Or, at least, they would if this story was getting anything like the exposure it deserves.

Yes. That's right. It's time for us to do our weekly pleading for people to get on board the Free Jack Idema blogburst (see sidebar). So far, we only have a handful of takers, and desperately need more bloggers willing to either write something once a week or cross-post from Cao's Blog. If you need to know more about this issue, her site covers everything in great detail. You should also stop by at SuperPatriots, who've been bashing away at this issue for longer than any of us, and without whom we wouldn't have ever heard the truth. If you decide to join, email Cao at this address.

Finally, PLEASE NOTE: The SuperPatriots and Jack images on this site are used by Rottweiler Puppy with written copyright permission and any use by any third party is subject to legal action by SuperPatriots.US

[A very warm welcome to readers of Cao's Blog. While it's certainly pleasing that Cao enjoyed the Pied Piper quip (we often wonder to what extent our U.S. readers grasp the English love affair with snark and sarcasm, so this kind of positive affirmation is always welcome), she, Cao, adds a little snippet concerning the little girl in the photo that we missed:

"Jack spent eight hours getting this little girl down from a village where everyone else was afraid to go. She would have lost her leg had it not been for some brilliant German Army surgeons)."

Hey! BBC! How about an article about the brave American soldier who wades through Islamonazi fire for eight hours in order to save a little girl's leg? ... Well? ... We're waiting ... *Sounds of crickets chirping* ... No? Damnit, but we thought this was just the sort of thing you guys loved to report on. Oh well. Our mistake.]

BBC Rat Leaves Floating Ship

2005-12-20T13:37:00.000Z

Anyone visiting the BBC's Middle East page yesterday would have been hard pushed to find any reference to the 70% of Iraqis who voted-in their first government a few days ago. Granted, if you looked really hard, you might have spotted 'Press upbeat on Iraqi poll' lurking surreptitiously near the bottom of the page. But. Still. It's hard not to come away with the impression that al-Beeb would rather forget about the huge success of democracy, at least until, as happened this morning, there was a slight hitch they could blow out of all proportion.

Instead, the two stories given pride-of-place over the weekend in the BBC's Middle East section were Frank Gardner's description of the 'wonders' of Dubai, and the strategic withdrawal of Caroline 'Haw-Haw' Hawley from Iraq. (After three years of tedious moaning, it seems as though successful elections were the final straw for poor Caroline -- She's off to report on goings on in the Zionist Entity. So look out, Israel. Something never-smiling your way comes.)

But, we digress. Here's a sample of what Frank Gardener thinks of life in the United Arab Emirates:

The sun still lifts off the quivering tarmac into a cloudless sky like a giant hot-air balloon, the same skeins of sand still drift around the edges of the runway.
[...]
The skyline changes almost overnight as ranks of plate glass skyscrapers shoot up towards the sun.
[...]
This town is awash with money, much of it coming from neighbouring Gulf states who are sitting on windfall revenue from high oil prices.
They simply cannot spend it fast enough.

No news, though, on when they're getting around to paving the streets with gold.

Oblivious to quite how hard he's gushing, Gardener continues in this vein for quite some time. Indeed, to let him tell it, you'd think the U.A.E. was an earthly paradise, filled with the kind of happy, smiling people leftists haven't had an opportunity to describe since the Berlin Wall came down.

However. There are a couple of words that the BBC's Security Correspondent manages to omit from his love-fest with Dubai, and you have to stop over at the CIA's World Factbook in order to see them in print:

Suffrage: None

Yes, folks, however attractive the gilding is on the U.A.E. cage (leastways, if you're not unlucky enough to be a child-slave forced to race camels for the rich sand-lice running things), it's still a dictatorship, and its people are still divided between enslavers and enslaved ...

... So, if that's how the BBC report on goings on in police-states run by child-abusers, how do they react to a country with its own democratic constitution and government?

Sifting through all my belongings I found little reminders of the chaotic days of spring 2003 just after the American-led coalition arrived.
You would still hear a lot of gunfire then but it was not until the summer that the bombings began - the Jordanian embassy first, then the UN, and the Red Cross.

This, if you hadn't guessed, is the Caroline Hawley version of 'what I did on my holidays'. We'll spare readers too much of her depressing drone (she gets as far as one-legged pensioners and pregnant dentists before anyone manages to switch her off), but, suffice to say, the contrast with the treatment meted out to those happy, laughing child-slavers is striking.

Why is this? Sour grapes that McChimpyBushHitler's War For Oil is turning out rather better than the quagmire-crowd expected? Well, certainly, that's a big part of it. And yet. It's also worth remembering that democracy has never been all that high up on the left's to-do list. It isn't that the average BBC or Guardian hack really hates the idea of people turning out to vote, so much as that they don't really love democracy either.

Here's Hawley again, providing a handy example of just how the dimly the concept of freedom is understood by the leftist mind:

But how quickly the resentment of the coalition crept in.
And no wonder.
It took weeks before a single public service worker was paid. Doctors and nurses turned to their savings to pay for taxi rides to work. Garbage festered in the streets.
[...]
Once, in Saddam Hussein's hometown of Tikrit, I had to help translate for them. There was a suspected bomb, and they had blocked off a road.
But they had no means of communicating that to an increasingly angry queue of drivers. Another time, a soldier shouted at me to "get off my road".
Imagine how Iraqis feel being treated like that in their own country.

Meanwhile, across the border in Iran, sans bombings, sans insurgency, sans impolite U.S. soldiers, they're being told how to dress themselves, how long their beards must be and what music they can listen to. What would it be like if Hawley and the rest of the annoying, Gramscian woodlice infesting MSM were to ponder how that must feel for a change? Because, prior to the arrival of the coalition in 2003, the Iraqi people, like the Iranians and the people of the United Arab Emirates today, didn't have a country. See, that's how it works when you live in a dictatorship -- The thugs with the power have the country, and the rest of the people, well, they don't have much of anything at all.

There's something almost unspeakably sad about people like Gardener and Hawley. There they are, watching 11 million of their fellow human beings eagerly voting for the Arab world's first democratic government, and all the pair of them can find to talk about is the state of public transport. What a small, closed world these people live in.

Maybe it's fitting, then, that Hawley leaves Baghdad in the same week as the Iraqi people step forward in order to join the rest of us in a larger, freer one.

VRWC: Who? Us?

2005-12-17T20:38:00.000Z

Every so often (and especially at times when we appear to be getting decent traffic), we here at Puppy Mansions start to worry that the VRWC's hegemony could be more complete. Accordingly, we think it's high time to introduce our U.S. readers (of which there seem to be quite a few today) to some of the highlights of the British blogosphere. Passing moonbats take note: resistance is futile. You will be assimilated.

House of Dumb, who spend their time pondering the strange thought-processes of the global left so you don't have to. Here's a sample, on the subject of leftism's failure to join up the dots between teaching everyone to hate the rich enough to kill them and people who ... well ... hate the rich enough to kill them:

But, OK, just for the sake of the moonbats' insane argument, let's assume that a right-wing politician mentioning the words 'immigration' and 'reform' in the same sentence is enough to turn ordinary citizens into Nazi killing machines. Doesn't that mean we're entitled to ask if there's a connection between the Left's crazed rhetoric about 'fat cats' and the like, and the brutal murder of a senior figure in the financial services industry by a killer described as 'obsessed with the rich' ? If not, why not ? Surely the evidence is exactly as compelling in this case as in the former case, right ?

Right For Scotland, who are currently managing the near-Herculean task of juggling blogging duties with teaching their newborn to throw darts at pictures of David 'Blue Labour' Cameron. Perhaps in an effort to further educate baby RFS, they present the following modern fable:

THE CLASSIC VERSION OF THIS FABLE.
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long,building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper has no food or shelter, so he dies out in the cold.

Vs THE BRITISH MODERN VERSION:
The ant works hard in the withering heat all summer long, building his house and laying up supplies for the winter.
The grasshopper thinks he's a fool, and laughs and dances and plays the summer away.
Come winter, the ant is warm and well fed. The shivering grasshopper calls a press conference and demands to know why the ant should be allowed to be warm and well fed while others less fortunate like him are cold and starving. the BBC shows up to provide live coverage of the shivering grasshopper, with cuts to a video of the ant in his comfortable warm home with a table filled with food. Lefties are stunned that in a country of such wealth, this poor grasshopper is allowed to suffer so while others have plenty.
The Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, SSP, the trade unions, the Make Poverty History campaign and the usual bunch of professional rioters demonstrate in front of the ant's house. The BBC, interrupting an Islamic cultural festival special from a burning Birmingham estate with breaking news, broadcasts them singing "We Shall Overcome."
Ken Livingston rants in an interview with Natasha Kaplinski that the ant has gotten rich off the backs of grasshoppers, and calls for an immediate tax hike on he ant to make him pay his "fair share."
In response to polls, the Labour Government drafts the economic Equity and Grasshopper Anti-Discrimination act, retroactive to the beginning of the summer. The ant's taxes are reassessed and he is also fined for failing to hire grasshoppers as helpers. Without enough money to pay both the fine and his newly imposed retroactive taxes, his home is confiscated by the government.
The ant moves to the US and starts a successful IT company.
The BBC later shows the now fat grasshopper finishing up the last of the ant's food though Spring is still months away, while the government house he is in, which just happens to be the ant's old house crumbles around him because he hadn't maintained it. Inadequate government funding is blamed, Jo Brand is appointed to head a commission of enquiry that will cost £10,000,000.
The grasshopper is soon dead of a drug overdose. The Daily Mirror blames it on obvious failure of government to address the root causes of despair arising from social inequity. The abandoned house is taken over by a gang of migrant spiders, praised by the government for enriching Britian’s multicultural diversity, who promptly start terrorizing the community.

Making Headlines, who're currently engaging in deeply subversive acts of pro-Christmas terrorism:

Also down in the PC front line trenches ive done my bit for Qerween and country. In my office where im honoured with the task of getting the company Xmas cards made up, the big cheese popped round and suggested we amend the wording to read Happy Holidays, it being a more international non 'offensive' english greeting. I smiled sweetly and then 'accidentally' forgot to copy check the cards before they went to print. So all our international offices will now have to suffer that dreadfully offensive christian message of good will - Happy Christmas. Bad luck eh. Frankly he's lucky i didnt insert the word sodding between the Happy and the Christmas.

The Lone Voice, who's also getting into the festive spirit by stretching out an open, inclusive hand to the Religion of Pieces. Step right up and feel the multicultural love:

The 12 Days of Jihad.
On the first day of Jihad, Allah gave to me... An AK and a stolen Humvee.
On the second day of Jihad, Allah gave to me... 2 Healthy Kidneys, An AK and a stolen Humvee.
On the third day of Jihad, Allah gave to me... 3 French Passports, 2 Healthy Kidneys, An AK and a stolen Humvee.
On the fourth day of Jihad, Allah gave to me... 4 Pounds of Semtex, 3 French Passports, 2 Healthy Kidneys, An AK and a stolen Humvee.
On the fifth day of Jihad, Allah gave to me... 5 RPGs! 4 Pounds of Semtex, 3 French Passports, 2 Healthy Kidneys, An AK and a stolen Humvee.
On the sixth day of Jihad, Allah gave to me... 6 Checkered Towels, 5 RPGs! 4 Pounds of Semtex, 3 French Passports, 2 Healthy Kidneys, An AK and a stolen Humvee.
On the seventh day of Jihad, Allah gave to me... 7 Flying Lessons, 6 Checkered Towels, 5 RPGs! 4 Pounds of Semtex, 3 French Passports, 2 Healthy Kidneys, An AK and a stolen Humvee.
On the eighth day of Jihad, Allah gave to me... 8 Roadside Bombings, 7 Flying Lessons, 6 Checkered Towels, 5 RPGs! 4 Pounds of Semtex, 3 French Passports, 2 Healthy Kidneys, An AK and a stolen Humvee.
On the ninth day of Jihad, Allah gave to me... 9 Virgins Dancing, 8 Roadside Bombings, 7 Flying Lessons, 6 Checkered Towels, 5 RPGs! 4 Pounds of Semtex, 3 French Passports, 2 Healthy Kidneys, An AK and a stolen Humvee.
On the tenth day of Jihad, Allah gave to me... 10 Infidel Beheadings, 9 Virgins Dancing, 8 Roadside Bombings, 7 Flying Lessons, 6 Checkered Towels, 5 RPGs! 4 Pounds of Semtex, 3 French Passports, 2 Healthy Kidneys, An AK and a stolen Humvee.
On the eleventh day of Jihad, Allah gave to me... 11 Pictures of Yassir, 10 Infidel Beheadings, 9 Virgins Dancing, 8 Roadside Bombings, 7 Flying Lessons, 6 Checkered Towels, 5 RPGs! 4 Pounds of Semtex, 3 French Passports, 2 Healthy Kidneys, An AK and a stolen Humvee.
On the twelfth day of Jihad, Allah gave to me... 12 Freedom Fighters, 11 Pictures of Yassir, 10 Infidel Beheadings, 9 Virgins Dancing, 8 Roadside Bombings, 7 Flying Lessons, 6 Checkered Towels, 5 RPGs! 4 Pounds of Semtex, 3 French Passports, 2 Healthy Kidneys, An AK and a stolen Humveeeeeee!

Aw. And who says we right-wingers aren't sensitive to Muslim feelings?

Having rounded-up our favourite bits of the British blogosphere for U.S. readers, though, it would be remiss of us to ignore events across the pond. Accordingly, may we present our American favourites.

First up, we'd like to draw your attention to Cao's Blog. Way back last January, when RP was pulling, oh, a grand total of eight hits at day, Cao (pronounced 'Key', if anyone was wondering) was kind enough to invite us to join The Wide Awakes. This was the turning point for Rottweiler Puppy, and we'll always be grateful for the good turn Cao did us back then ... Though, should anyone entertain the notion that we're recommending her out of gratitude, they'd better think again. Here's Cao in full flight:

I saw a poster at Protest Warrior talking about Republicans: A Proud Tradition of Growing Government at a Slower Rate. That’s hogwash. I don’t believe in GROWING government, we should SHRINK it. We should eliminate the waste of money that we throw away on social programs…people are capable of helping themselves! What makes it more difficult is when there are generations of people depending on the welfare state to give them a check to do absolutely nothing. Actually, I believe in limited government; as the founders clearly framed it. Fewer laws, fewer rules, less bureaucratic restrictions, and the people have more freedom. Conversely, the bigger government gets, the fewer freedoms you and I have. In the 20 years since the Reagan revolution began, the federal budget has almost quadrupled. Even adjusting for inflation, the federal enterprise is twice as large as it was in 1980. Today, approximately one million more Americans work for the government than for manufacturers – and the government doesn’t produce anything!

But you can almost hear the blood vessels popping inside moonbat skulls, can't you?

MNBlogger, a brand, spanking new blog who does his bit for bi-partisan opposition to McChimpyBushHitler's War For Oil by publishing the following cartoon:

And then there's The Dick List, whose blogging skills were running so white-hot they recently managed to bag an interview with none other than Angelina Jolie. Wow:

TDL: How have your big titties helped your carreer?
Jolie: I won't answer that
TDL: So you've got something to hide?
Jolie: No. Can we move onto something else?
TDL: Sure. Scarlett Johansson is a talented young actress. She is a bit of a plumper, but also has huge knockers. Are you threatened by her massive mummeries?
Jolie: I haven't thought about her.
TDL: I smell a catfight, meow.
Jolie: Did you just meow?

Damn, but you don't get this kind of searing, incisive social commentary from the left side of the blogosphere, now do you?

[Welcome readers of The Devil's Kitchen, who, along with Dangerously Subversive Dad, are the answer to those nagging 'who did we forget to mention' doubts that were surfacing as we wrote the above post.]

It Was The Best Of Times:BBC Say No. No. No. It Was The Worst Of Times

2005-12-16T03:05:00.000Z

It's a good, good day today:

Iraqis have voted in large numbers for their first full-term government since the US-led invasion in 2003.

Well, unless we're regarding Saddam and his obscene spawn as a 'full-term government', it's actually the first time they've voted in living memory ... But, no. We're not going to give the BBC a chance to spoil things -- Today, it's our turn to feed miserable, sour-faced leftists everywhere huge mouthfuls of bitterness and ashes.

Open wide, now:

Voting was extended by an hour in some areas because of the high turnout, Iraq's election commission said.

No. Wider:

Sunni Arabs, who boycotted the last election in January, appear to have participated in large numbers, even in insurgent strongholds.

Now say 'Ahh':

Turnout is reported to have quickened throughout the day, with people queuing to cast their ballots.

Oh. Dear. You seem to have a hardened lump of indigestible leftist bile stuck in the back of your throat:

That was the case even in the predominantly Sunni cities of Falluja and Ramadi, hotbeds of insurgent activity. At one stage, an election official in Falluja said that so many people were voting, they had run out of ballot papers.

I -- I don't know how to tell you this, Mr. Moonbat, but I'm afraid that the lump we found ... It's fatal to lefitism:

Some 15 million Iraqis were eligible to vote.

No. I'm sorry. Blaming everything on McChimpyBushHitlerHalliburton won't help you. Look. It really pains me to say this, but that indigestible lump of leftist bile really is going to kill you. Please, please, please try to cough the hideous black lump up before it's too late:

"It's a day of victory, a day of independence and freedom," said 60-year-old Shia Muslim Mohammed Ahmed al-Bayati as he voted in Baghdad.

No! Please! We beg of you! Try not to focus on those nice men with the 'insurgency' signs -- The seventh-century remedies won't help you. Only modern medicine can cure the affliction you're cursed with. Really, truly, we're your only hope.

BBC World Affairs Editor John Simpson in Baghdad says the voters he spoke to believe the election will help to bring about a strong, effective government of the kind Iraqis are desperate for.

Try to stay calm, John. Take slow, deep breaths. We know that the little, hard-left world you've been inhabiting since the fall of Saigon is about to come crashing down about your ears ... But. Still. Millions of Iraqis are happier today than the millions of Vietnamese you consigned to the tender mercies of Stalinism in your student days. Surely that is some consolation?

He says people also think it will bring Sunnis into government in some strength, and that it will get rid of the Americans and British, whose military presence is widely disliked.

Well, alright. The Islamic Broadcasting Corporation's Dhimmi-In-Chief isn't as keen on free elections as the Iraqi people. Fine. Let's run with that. What does Simpson foresee?

But he adds that Iraqi politicians are well aware that this positive feeling will evaporate if it takes them as long to form a coalition government as it did after the January election.

Well, then, we suppose we should all just stand in awe of John Simpson's analysis .. Only (and bearing in mind all of those Sunnis voting today), how does Simpson's whining about impatient Iraqis today square with what he was prophesising for Iraq back in March this year?

Yet the basic problem remains: the Sunni population is as angry, resentful and resistance-minded as ever.

... But, John, if all those 'angry', 'resentful' Sunnis are now voting in 'large numbers', doesn't that mean that your considered opinion in March this year was ... um ... completely wrong?

Oh. Well. What does it really matter? The Iraqi people are free today, so let the leftists waffle pointlessly on.

As with the Cold War: We. Win.

Free Jack Idema Blogburst, Week Five

2005-12-14T23:57:00.000Z

One of the things we haven't dealt with at length in talking about the case of imprisoned U.S. Special Forces soldier Jack Idema and his men is the fact that they were retried and found innocent of all charges over a year ago.

Idema, of course, fell foul of sections of the non-Northern Alliance Afghan government and the F.B.I. when he arrested an Afghan Judge, Mawlawi Sidiq. Following months of torture at the hands of the pro-Taliban elements still operating within the Afghan 'legal' system, Idema and his men were subjected to a sham trail which Jack's lawyer, John Tiffany, described in the following way:

The first trial was a sham. No prosecution witness gave testimony under oath, no cross-examination or questions of any kind were allowed, no defense witnesses were allowed, there was no discovery, and poor often completely erroneous, sometimes non-existent translation of the trial. The three Americans barely knew what was happening, and neither did their lawyers.

Three months later, in December 2004, the case came to appeal. At this point, it became obvious why the first trial was so chaotic -- There was a complete lack of evidence against Idema and his men:

In a closed secret appeals court hearing in the new trial ordered in December 2004, a six judge panel, found Jack Idema and his team INNOCENT of all torture charges. This six-judge panel consisted of twice the judges normally sitting on the court and included two senior religious judges. They found them innocent after a video of Taliban Judge Mawlawi Sidiq was played in court.
Judge Sidiq stated during the tape that he "was never tortured, hung upside down, doused with water, or even slapped." In fact, the Taliban Karzai appointee admitted that his ONLY complaint was that the SuperPatriots did not allow him to use the bathroom for more than twelve hours and this violated Islamic Law. The court also privately viewed pictures of Sidiq meeting with one of the world's top terrorists, Gulbideen Hekmatyar, along with one of Sidiq's brothers, Malikyar, the original terrorist Task Force Saber/7 was hunting.

... So, having proven that, (a) the original charges against Idema were unfounded, and (b) that the 'respected judge' he'd arrested was, in fact, up to his neck in terrorist activities, it really is worth asking why Idema and his team are still under lock and key.

The answer to this one, shamefully, is that elements within the U.S. intelligence community, specifically at the State Department and in the F.B.I., have exerted all their influence in order to keep Idema behind bars. After all, it would certainly not be in the best interests of these people to have Jack back in the U.S., talking about the F.B.I.-sponsored torture he'd suffered in Afghanistan, let alone the way in which the agency sided with the very people who were responsible for 9/11, and against those who were hunting them.

In effect, then, Jack Idema and his men are political prisoners, being held on the orders of the U.S.. Unlike the Islamoscum detained at Gitmo, however, these men are heroes, not mass-murderers. Even worse (and, again, unlike the terrorist vermin who are treated to plates of lemon chicken), Idema has been subjected to numerous assassination attempts by Taliban inmates.

Far from concerning the agencies whose word keeps Idema imprisoned, the thought that Jack and his men might die in prison appeals to these people:

The 7th attempt on their lives at Pulacharke prison due to an Al Qaeda "riot". During the 8 hour siege, the US government, specifically Lieutenant General David Barno, stated that he could care less if the they were killed in order to "end the problem" with them. Additionally, the US State Department, although notified that the Americans were under siege by al-Qaida terrorists, told Idema during the siege, that the US government would render no assistance, and had NO INTENTION of preventing their murder. LTG Barno was later quoted as stating Petitioners' murder would "be a good thing."

Imagine David 'disgrace-to-the-uniform' Barno suggesting the murder of an imprisoned Koranimal would 'be a good thing' -- We'd be hearing the sound of popping heads over at the BBC and Guardian for months.

Yet. In the case of Jack Idema, it really is down to bloggers to get the word out. To sections of the U.S. government he's an embarrassment they'd like to see quietly removed, while, to the leftists who usually champion such cases, he fails the lowlife-test the likes of Amnesty International use to determine who gets their help.

The reason we're stressing the need for bloggers to get this story out is because there still aren't enough names on the Free Jack Idema blogroll (see sidebar). Seriously, we need more people posting on this topic if we're to bring about pressure for Jack's release. As always, anyone wishing to get involved with the campaign should contact Cao at this address. There's also a great deal more information on the subject at Cao's Blog and SuperPatriots.

BBC: Colour-Blindness On Cronulla Beach

2005-12-13T13:49:00.000Z

Anyone who remembers the Muslim-Jamaican race riots in Birmingham a month-or-so ago will also recall how the BBC did their level best to pass the murder-fuelled carnage off as 'disturbances' between 'youths'. In fact, reading the initial reports (sadly, long-since airbrushed from the BBC's servers), you would have been hard-pressed to work out precisely (or even approximately) who was doing the rioting or why.

Indeed, so determined were the BBC to play down the ethnicity of the rioters that almost all of their photographers seemed to have been ordered into weird photo-angle mode. Thus:

It comes as something of a shock, then, to learn that such delicate sensibilities don't come into play when the rioting is committed by guys like these:

Thousands of young white men have converged on Cronulla Beach in Sydney, Australia, and attacked people of Arabic and Mediterranean background.
Police and ambulance officers were pelted with beer cans and bottles, and an ambulance was attacked.
Several people were injured in the alcohol-fuelled violence, and at least 12 were arrested.

Drunk and attacking people of Arabic and Mediterranean origin? Gosh, but aren't white people awful? Just look at that guy with the bottle -- Can't you just see the hate in his piggy, little eyes? (Of course, when it's non-whites trying to smash cops in the faces with bottles, they apparently wear expressions of such Zen-like calm that MSM photographers feel its more interesting to snap pictures of the back of their heads. Hmm.)

Obviously, though, riots like this don't just happen. All that anger has to come from somewhere, and, at least the way the BBC tell it, this was the point of origin this weekend in Sydney:

The clashes follow assaults a week ago on two volunteer lifeguards at the southern Sydney beach, reportedly by youths of Arabic and Mediterranean backgrounds.

Amazing, isn't it? When white guys start a bit of aggro on the beach, they're described as 'young white men', 'racists' and 'drunk'. Yet. When non-whites decide to beat the crap out of two lifeguards, BBC-speak morphs them into far less intimidating-sounding 'youths'. Also, while there's no way of knowing whether the Lebanese gang in question were drunk or sober, it's also worth noting that the BBC steer well clear of suggesting this attack might have been underscored by racism. Also there's the weasel-word 'reportedly'. What does that hint at? Doubt the lifeguard-bashers were, indeed, Lebanese Muslims? That all this violence is down to white racists stirring up trouble where perhaps none exists?

It certainly seems this is what the BBC would like people to believe, since they fail to detail some of the other activities of Lebanese 'youth':

A YOUNG woman this week told a TV camera crew of the intimidation she has experienced on Cronulla beach.
"They'll stand over you while you're sunbaking, block your sun so they get your attention, then say, 'She's not worth doing 55 years for'," she told them.
For those unsure of what these lowlifes are referring to, it's the length of the prison sentence which was given to Sydney's infamous gang rapist, Bilal Skaf.

So, question: Is racism really the main component of these riots? After all, there's plentiful evidence to suggest that the majority of rioting whites are more angry at the behaviour of Lebanese gangs than their ethnicity. While this absolutely does not excuse breaking bottles in cops' faces, still, it's difficult to escape the impression that the BBC are determined to portray white Australians in the worst of possible lights.

This conclusion is reinforced when one considers the hand-wringing and soul-searching that accompanied the Corporation's coverage of the recent Paris Intifada. Back then, every excuse (unemployment, boredom, frustration, white racism, police brutality) was trotted in mitigation of the car-and-disabled-pensioner burning thugs. Fast-forward a few weeks, though, and the best explanation reporters can come up with for events in Australia are 'drunk' and 'bigoted'. Forget fair reporting -- Apparently, white people aren't even entitled to 'root-causes'.

So what's going on? Well, as with so much of what passes for objectivity at the BBC, rather than conveying the facts along with balanced analysis, what we're seeing is an attempt to either squeeze real-life events into the left's ideological template, or to trim away any details, however relevant, that cannot be made to fit.

Hence, in the BBC mindset, any violence carried out by whites against non-whites must be the result of racism. Conversely, any violence perpetrated by non-whites, whether against each other or against whites, is either interpreted as a victim-class striking back against oppression, or, as here, simply edited out of the picture entirely:

By Sunday night, the violence appeared to have spread to a second beach suburb, Maroubra, where men armed with baseball bats reportedly attacked cars.
And police said a man was stabbed in the back in south Sydney in what media reports said appeared to be further racial violence.

The BBC don't provide readers with any further information, but, following directly on from accounts of white rioters, it would seem reasonable to conclude that white Australians had taken their 'drink-fuelled', 'racist' rampage further, smashing cars with baseball bats and stabbing passers-by. In fact, as we learn from Israeli National News, quite the opposite is true:

Soon after, Arab youth began attacking police and smashing cars around the Sydney area. Thirty-one people were injured, 28 arrested and approximately one hundred cars were smashed during the night. Hundreds of young Muslims then gathered near the Lakemba Mosque in southern Sydney, readying to travel to Maroubra Beach where up to 300 locals were reportedly waiting for an arranged fight until the police intervened.
Monday night, Arab mobs descended on Cronulla, stabbing a woman, assaulted several passers-by and smashing shops around the area. Police told Australian news agencies that there were hundreds of armed men in the Muslim crowd as well.
Meanwhile, crowds of local Muslims surrounded mosques, flashing handguns before news cameras and saying they were merely responding to information they had that local gangs intended to attack their place of worship.
There are also reports of text messages circulating within the Arab community calling for revenge attacks in Cronulla next Sunday and police are still searching for an Arab man who stabbed another man in the back Sunday night.

... So, and in spite of the impression the BBC are at pains to convey, the guys smashing up cars and stabbing bystanders weren't white at all, but Lebanese. Interesting, eh? Because once you're armed with this information, the whole, sorry business looks less like whites launching racist attacks on helpless Arabs, and more like general, all-round thuggery on both sides. More to the point, it also seems clear that the worst of the violence is being committed by the Lebanese.

Not that you're likely to hear this from the BBC -- Such inconvenient facts would likely interrupt the flow of their leftist narrative.

(Cross-posted at The Wide Awakes)

BBC Tax And Spend In Sweden

2005-12-11T12:28:00.000Z

Every so often, the BBC decide to sing the praises of Sweden's high-tax economy and enormous, bloated welfare system. Of course, since they're supposed to make at least some effort at impartiality when Beeboids try this on they generally dress the hymn of praise for all things Scandinavian up as a news item.

Considering that Sweden isn't exactly the most ... um ... eventful of places, this is easier said than done:

They may not look like health workers, but the bouncers outside some of Stockholm's trendiest nightspots are still part of a push to improve lifestyles.
Bar and nightclub staff across Sweden's capital have been trained in how to spot and intervene when people are high on drugs and booze.
It means instead of just being turned away, people are offered advice about what help is on offer and warned about the risk of over-indulging.

Yes, folks, Sweden really is so boring that bouncers handing out anti-drug leaflets fits into the 'breaking news' category. Still, this non-story serves its purpose; namely, to give the BBC's Nick Triggle an excuse to spend the 900 of his 1000 words twittering on about how fabulous life is in Euro-weenie land. Here he is, warming to his theme:

But such community schemes are far from unique in Sweden.

And, just in case any readers are having doubts about the effectiveness (or cost) of these community schemes, Triggle reaches for backup in the form of a beardy-weirdy at Birmingham University:

Professor Ham said: "They [the Swedish] have a good record. From public health campaigns to accessing care and leisure services, Sweden does a lot to prevent ill health.
"Local government is much more used to dealing with health than it is in England."

Well, alright. No one's arguing that 'preventing ill-health' is anything other than a good idea. Indeed, as useful suggestions go, it's only one step down the obviousness ladder from 'try to keep breathing'. Only, here's the thing: many of us are firmly of the opinion that the responsibility for one's health belongs with the individual and not the state. Further, we'd argue tha the U.S. approach of treating its citizens as grown-up enough to pay for their own healthcare is definitely the way to go.

Still, if we're really going to run with the line that socialised healthcare is a bad idea, it's necessary to come up with a compelling argument as to why we revile the (undoubtedly successful) Swedish model so. After all, if Swedes all enjoy robust health, why on earth should we be so critical of their system?

There are two reasons:

First, and predictably, there's cost. Put simply, socialised healthcare is far, far more expensive than the free-market alternative. And, just for the benefit of any drooling leftists who want to argue that it's impossible to put a price on a human life, we're going to be bastards and do just that.

Hence: the average tax burden in Sweden (split between local and national tax) is a staggering 50%. Think about that. Fifty. Per. Cent. Damn, but that must hurt. What's even more mind-boggling is that, apart from healthcare and welfare, the Swedish state doesn't actually have a whole lot of other things to spend its huge plunder on. So while the rest of us manage to save the world from Islamofascism while keeping a good deal more than half of our own money, Swedes are paying through the nose in order to have nightclub doormen double-up as drug-councillors. They must feel so proud.

... But maybe we're not putting this bluntly enough. Alright, then, try this: what percentage of income does the average American pay for healthcare? Because, even if we take the top rate of tax (35% for those earning more than $319,000), it's doubtful that health insurance is costing anyone the 15% difference between this and what Swedes are forced to pay. (So if anyone was wondering just how much money we Brits would have to spring for in order to goad the socialist drones 'working' in our own NHS to clean out the face-eating bacteria and provide an adequate service, now you have some idea.)

The second problem with the Swedish model is that when you hand over responsibility for your own healthcare to the state, the people now running your life begin to get all sorts of ideas about how to extend their control:

Meanwhile, county councils have been encouraging GPs to give "exercise on prescription" and fund more home visits by nurses to address lifestyle.

Unfortunately, Nick Triggle doesn't see fit to inform us just what evil acts a Swede has to commit in order to get a visit from the lifestyle police. Are the nightclub bouncers we met earlier taking names and addresses? Or do the nurses in question just rove from house to house, conducting spot checks for alcohol, tobacco and fatty foods? Either way, it's quite hard not to read something slightly sinister into a state that pursues its citizens into their own homes in order to hector them about their unhealthy ways.

Predictably, though, the BBC pass a very different verdict on Sweden's high-tax, high-interference state:

But when it comes to comparisons - even taking into account the lower levels of deprivation compared to the UK - there is little to fault Sweden for.

Apart from the obscene tax-burden. And the state's attempt to micro-manage every aspect of it's citizens lives.

Oh, and the fact that it appears to be giving Beeboid minions all kinds of ideas.

Meet Blue-Labour: Centrists Without Attitude

2005-12-10T19:41:00.000Z

So, the British 'Conservative' Party has elected a shiny, new leader for itself in the form of David Cameron.

Now, alright, it should be obvious to regular readers of the Puppy that we haven't been on very friendly terms with Blue-Labour for ... oh ... 90 days or so. But. We'd still like to see a real conservative government in Britain, so how does the new guy measure up to the challenge of accomplishing this?

On taxation, he has insisted he "believes in lower taxes", but only pledged to balance the money raised through growth between public spending and tax cuts.

And ...

On health, he has suggested he would like to see even greater involvement of the private sector in the NHS. But has combined this with a pledge to create a world-beating, public system.

And ...

Part of his pitch for the leadership was to transform the look and appeal of the party with a more inclusive approach.
But, while he is ready to support a variety of lifestyles, including gay partnerships, he still believes the family is the best unit.

Or, put another way, Cameron's policies will be to:

'Lower taxes (to please working people), higher public spending (to please Gordon Brown's army of public service parasites)
Privatise bits of the NHS (to please the fiscal conservatives), pump money into the rest of it (to please the socialist dreamers)
Support the traditional family (to please the social conservatives), pander to fags, feminazis, perverts and unwed mothers (to send L3 spinning into seventh heaven).

Is anyone else noticing a kind of 'everyone wins the lottery' pattern to Cameron's stated policies here? Because, you know, it really does look as though the Boy Wonder's decided that if you can't fool all of the people all of the time, you can, at least, try pandering to them.

Only, here's the thing -- While you may succeed in politics by doing this, it will not translate into success for Britain. We know this for a fact because over the last eight years Blair has been trying the same thing. The only effect has been to lock our country into a kind of holding pattern, with no real movement either forward or back. Granted, when you compare that to the disaster of pre-Thatcher Labour governments, with garbage piled up in the streets, corpses left unburied and strikers causing power cuts and three-day weeks, Blair hasn't done a bad job of running the country. More to the point, he's actually delivered on the core promise he made back in 1997 -- Nu-Labour offered the British people a centrist government, driven by policies that were neither too right-, nor too left-wing, and this is exactly what we've ended up with. The problem with Blairism isn't an absence of ideology, or that it leans too far to the left. No. The problem is that while centrism doesn't work as badly as socialism, it doesn't work as well as the centre-right alternative.

To prove this point, you only have to compare the current state of affairs with what Margaret Thatcher achieved during her years in power: the unions -- smashed; the left's grip on local government -- broken; the economy -- rejuvenated. Here is someone who should be the template of what a conservative leader looks like: a woman who tackled the problems facing us head on, and without apology for the wailing and teeth-gnashing her methods provoked on the left.

Because, really, it shouldn't be too difficult for anyone to work out that if a decade of centre-right policies transforms Britain, and a decade of centre-nothing policies sees us treading water, then hiring a Blair Mark Two to run the Conservative Party probably isn't the smartest of moves. So why have Conservatives done this?

The answer, it seems, is that Conservatives are guilty of confusing packaging with content. See, it's one thing (and a good thing) that the Conservative Party have finally grasped the need to run with a leader who has at least some political ability -- Like it or not, politics is a game for the media-savvy, and in order to win, you need someone at the helm who can look good on TV and talk a good game. However. The problem is that Conservatives also appear to have reached the somewhat bizarre conclusion that the only people who have these abilities are other centrists. What's going on? Have the British right started believing the BBC sneers about Conservatives being the 'nasty party'? Or have they just decided that what people actually want is centrist government?

Because it would be an awful shame if Conservatives, having finally grasped that winning elections means fielding a charismatic leader, they abandoned the very ideas that make winning worthwhile.

Free Jack Idema Blogburst: Week Four

2005-12-07T20:24:00.000Z

It's been Rendition Week for the left, with moonbats everywhere bouncing off walls and shrieking about the supposed abuse of Islamovermin at the hands of the CIA. Over the last few days, we've heard tales of secret CIA flights crisscrossing the globe with a cargo of bearded crazies. Worse, it turns out that many of the planes in question have been stopping-off in the sainted capitals of Europe, thus giving many British human rights hustlers reason to yelp even more loudly than usual. Here's the ever-reliable Shami Chakrabarti, director of Liberty, crying on the BBC's shoulder:

"The allegations, the suspicions, the circumstantial evidence if you like, gives serious enough concern that we should ask chief constables to do their duty.
"They have positive obligations under international law and under our human rights act to investigate, and that's what we ask them to do."

The problem for leftists, of course, is that in spite their most strenuous efforts, no hard (or even vaguely credible) evidence of prisoners suffering anything worse than air-sickness has appeared. Indeed, were it not for the 'allegations' of a few swivel-eyed Islamofascists arousing the 'suspicions' of human rights activists, this entire non-story would have died long ago.

You would think, then, that when totally credible evidence surfaces detailing the F.B.I.'s involvement in the illegal imprisonment and torture of foreign nationals, Shami and co. would be beside themselves with glee:

Shortly after their arrest, they were subjected to varying degrees of torture and interrogation, apparently determined by rank. Jack Idema was repeatedly beaten by, and in the presence of- Amrullah at NDS Headquarters, as was Lieutenant Rasuli. A palace official was personally aware of and authorizing, at a minimum, Idema’s initial torture at NDS Headquarters by Amrullah, with FBI agents in close proximity and directing the interrogation.
During the following days and nights Idema was tortured with boiling water, starvation, threats of death, and assault with various implements (such as wire cables and rubber whips), resulting in broken ribs, a separated sternum, torn rotator cuffs, hemorrhaged eyes, multiple concussions, lacerations, contusions, and bruises. Although the U.S. Embassy later had medical reports indicating the extent of the torture, Sandra Ingram, Assistant U.S. Consul DOS Kabul, ordered the reports rewritten to tone down the extent of the injuries. During the torture Idema was restrained by Taliban iron leg bars and American Handcuff Company restraints (Serial Number # 177709) supplied by the U.S. Department of Justice. Further, reportedly FBI personnel were well aware of the ongoing torture and did nothing to intercede or stop it, and actually encouraged it.

Isn't this account exactly what L3's human rights hustlers have been looking for all along? What we've got here is an innocent man, snatched by the F.B.I. and handed over to a government which isn't as picky about the use of torture as the U.S. Surely, Jack Idema should be a poster child for Liberty and a cause celebre for human rights activists everywhere? Well, um, no:

Sorry, no matches were found containing Idema.

Well, okay. Liberty are only one of the many, many human rights organisations. How about Amnesty International?

We couldn't find anything matching Idema.
You might have more luck if you amend it below to use more, more common or more general words.

More general words, eh? Like what? 'Gulags'? 'CIA flights'? 'Abu Gharib'? 'America is the Great Satan and must be destroyed'? Because, you know, it really is beginning to look as though the people who whine endlessly about an Islamonazi getting to see the world from the back of a CIA plane have absolutely no reaction at all to the very real torture and imprisonment of an American hero. Why might that be? Hmm?

My friends call me Jack, and my enemies call me every name in the book, and then some. Bin Laden and Hekmatyar and every al-Qaida and Taliban terrorist in the world call me some things I’m not allowed to write here- because my goal is to bring this war to them all over the world– wherever they may hide, sleep, or cower. This is a war, this ain’t Sunday School folks. Do you want another few thousand Americans diving out windows in flames from 110 stories above the streets of New York?
[...]
You can’t fight terrorists with law enforcement and prosecution, Clinton tried that for eight years. You can’t do it, they are animals– they are not human, just ask the families that lost their loved ones on 9/11. When the terrorists capture us they cut off our heads on television. When we capture them they complain that we don’t let them piss for twelve hours. Well, sorry about that motherfucker, you were about to drive explosive rigged gas tankers into Bagram and kill 500 American soldiers in a ball of flames. You should be glad I didn’t defenestrate you. I believe that real Americans want real counter-terrorist operations, not bullshit press junkets and canned PR stories from PAOs that shot a gun once in their life on the basic training qualification range. I didn’t start this fucking war, not the one with bin laden, nor the one with the press, they started it, but I will finish it, or die in the process.

Now, while no sane person could find anything to disagree with in what Idema has to say here, it should be pretty obvious that none of this is exactly music to Shami Chakrabarti's ears. Only, here's the thing: she's willing to overlook the far bloodier actions and thoughts of Islamofascists. Plot to fly a plane into an office block, and Shami will protect you. Organise self-detonations on the London Tube, and Shami will leap to your defence. Arrange for some creep to murder little Iraqi children as they beg for candy, and Shami will be your best friend.

But defend the free world from bearded crazies, and the silence from the left's human rights circus is deafening. What a strange, morally-inverted world these people inhabit.

[Anyone wishing to get involved with the campaign to free Jack Idema should contact Cao at this address. There's also a great deal more information on the subject at Cao's Blog and SuperPatriots.]

British Race Hustlers Come Out To Play

2005-12-04T10:45:00.000Z

In Britain, the left are currently are having trouble explaining their definition of 'racism'.

We're talking, of course, about the murders of Christopher Yates and Anthony Walker, both of whom were young men whose lives were cut short by mindless, racist thugs. Thanks to the left, however, this is where all similarities between the killings end.

First up, here're the facts of each case:

Sajid Zulfiqar, 25, Zahid Bashir, 23, and Imran Maqsood, 21, of Ilford, east London, will be sentenced on Thursday.
The court heard that after the attack Zulfiqar shouted, in Urdu: "We have killed the white man. That will teach an Englishman to interfere in Paki business."
Mr Yates's head was stamped on and he died from multiple injuries to his face, said Anthony Leonard QC, prosecuting.

And:

Sensing trouble, Anthony and his friends looked for another bus stop, taking a short-cut through McGoldrick Park.
But as they reached the other side, they were ambushed near the park entrance. Taylor pole-axed Anthony.
*[...]*
Although the axe blow did not kill Anthony immediately, it would have rendered him brain dead, a pathologist told the court.

So far, so sickening. Only, it's at this point that the British left, spearheaded by the judiciary and media elites, seem to have decided that only whites who murder by non-whites are guilty of racism. Here's the judgement in Anthony Walker case:

The racist killers of black teenager Anthony Walker have been told they must serve minimum terms of 17 and 23 years.
Anthony, 18, was killed with an ice axe at McGoldrick Park in Huyton, Merseyside, on 29 July.
Michael Barton, 17, of Boundary Road, Huyton, who was found guilty of his murder on Wednesday, will serve a minimum of 17 years and eight months.

And here's the judgement in the case of Christopher Yates:

While the attack on Mr Yates may have had the hallmarks of racism, judge Martin Stephens said the evidence suggested otherwise.
"Between you that morning, you attacked people of all races, white, black and Asian," he said.
"These, in my judgment, were random attacks carried out on people who had the misfortune to come across you in your drink-fuelled rampage."

And, doubtless, the happy chants of 'We have killed the white man. That will teach an Englishman to interfere in Paki business' were the killers' way of showing their understanding of diversity politics. Because. Look. There's clearly something wrong here, and it highlights the disturbing approach modern leftists have to the whole issue of race.

For most of us, you see, a racist is someone who regards another human being as of less worth because and only because they are from a different ethnic background to the racist's own. As definitions go, this one has two advantages: it is elegant in its simplicity (always a good thing if you want to make an ethical point); it is fair -- On this model, just as anyone can be held account for murder or theft, so, too, can anyone be accused of racism.

Of course, simplicity and fairness aren't two words that immediately spring to mind when considering the machinations of the modern left, and so it is that their interpretation of 'racism' is ... um ... complicated by more ifs and buts than Bill Clinton's definition of sexual intercourse. Indeed, to understand what the average leftist means by 'racism', one has to enter a strange, alternate reality inhabited by things called 'victim groups' and 'oppressors'.

Certainly, we hear about these quite often, but what's often not emphasised is the extent to which this way of thinking has infected the leftist elites. See, in order to grasp why Anthony Walker's family are entitled to justice, but Christopher Yates' aren't, we need to understand that the game leftists are playing here has nothing to do with individuals at all.

While most of us still cling to the idea that we matter more as unique human beings than as members of this or that group, the left have abandoned such thinking in favour of tarring the whole of humanity with one of two, broad brushes. These -- colour-coded 'victim' and 'oppressor' for the kind of simplicity leftists appreciate -- enable those wielding them to make decisions about, say, horrific murders based on political theory, not facts. Hence, whereas most of us would think it pertinent to learn that Christopher Yates' killers were wandering around chanting 'We've killed a white man', it seems quite clear that the Gramscians tasked with handling the case had other ideas. Indeed, it's hard to escape the conclusion that since the killers were members of one of the left's most precious victim groups, it was a given for many on the left that they couldn't also exhibit 'oppressor group' behaviours. Like racism. Or stomping on someone's head becuase he wasn't a Pakistani.

Obviously, though, the barely coherent ravings of our judiciary are only part of the story. Here's the rest:

Maqsood, Bashir and Zulfiqar eschewed their parents' religion and culture - although they paid lip service to it - and chose instead to set out on a night of drink fuelled violence that is sadly all too familiar.

So, to recap: if you're white and murder a non-white, British justice still exists. On the other hand, if you're non-white, then -- hey! -- you can stomp some poor sod to death before boasting about the ethnicity of your victim. Not only will the courts cover for you, but big media drones will take great delight in suggesting that the reason for your crimes is that you weren't Muslim enough. Charming.

Oh, and if any of our non-British readers are wondering why the racism tag is such a big deal -- It doubles the time you serve in prison.

(Hat-tip House of Dumb)
(Trackbacked to Cao's Blog)

Jack Idema Blogburst -- Week Three

2005-11-30T21:54:00.000Z

For the last few weeks, we've been writing about the plight of U.S. Special Services operative Jack Idema, illegally imprisoned in Afghanistan. One of the things we haven't talked much about, though, is one of Idema's fellow prisoners, Edward Caraballo [pictured, seated]. Unlike Idema and his right-hand man Brent Bennett, Caraballo wasn't even part of Task Force Sabre 7, but a freelance journalist who was making a film about Idema's work. Caraballo never carried a weapon. He never took part in military operations against Islamopaths -- He was simply documenting Idema's work.

Yet, in spite of this, MSM have either ignored or played down Caraballo's status as a non-combatant, which seems odd, since far from being a small-time journalist, he's been in the news business for the best part of twenty-five years:

Back in the 1980s, Eddy Caraballo, 43, launched his career chronicling the sound and fury of punk rock with a weekly public-access cable show taped at the legendary CBGB club on the Bowery. His first scoop came in 1981 when he filmed the ruckus at the Ritz after a show by Johnny Rotten's Public Image. That led to TV gigs at stations from Texas to Virginia before Caraballo returned to New York in 1990 to work for WWOR/Channel 9, where he won four Emmy awards.

So Caraballo's an established, award-winning journalist ... Only, you wouldn't find this out from reading the BBC report on Jack Idema's trial. Here's what -- all -- they had to say about him:

Jonathan Idema and Brent Bennett were sentenced to 10 years in jail and Edward Caraballo eight years.

The Washington Post don't do much better; while they mention Carballo testified to being a journalist, they certainly don't stir themselves to confirm this as a fact:

A second American suspect, Edward Caraballo, testified quietly that he had acted only as a journalist and had accompanied Idema here to film his operations.

... So where's the outraged shrieking that accompanies almost every violation (or supposed violation) of journalistic rights? After all, these are the people who seem incapable of shutting up about the accidental deaths of Aljezeera reporters in Iraq two years ago, and who are still whining at high volume about the unfairness of Dan Rather's departure from CBS.

More disturbing still, even organisations whose job it is to protect imprisoned journalists are blanking Caraballo. Even though this man has been illegally imprisoned, tortured and subjected to repeated assassination attempts, a search over at The Committee To Protect Journalists (CPJ) yields the following wealth of information:

Your search - caraballo - did not match any documents. No pages were found containing "caraballo"

Interesting, eh? It seems that, just as the intelligence community hung Jack Idema out to dry, so, too, the journalistic community, and even the charities set up to work for imprisoned members of the press, are happy to do the same to Edward Caraballo. Why?

Perhaps the answer lies in the fact that Caraballo, unlike most MSM lefties, actually believes in the mission Jack Idema was on. Here's the man himself, displaying an admiration for Idema and his men that must rancour with the effete leftists at the BBC:

I have been embedded with these guys for more than a year now, and I am proud to say that they are my friends and comrades, bonded by the experience of being hung out to dry together. Brent and Zorro (to the left here) are strong, true men; we always pick up each others spirits when one of us gets down. Brent is hardly ever down. He is one of the most even-keeled individuals I've ever met. Jack is one of the most intelligent, creative, and dangerous individuals I have ever met. He is a warrior of the battlefield, of the courtroom, and in the media.

And here's what Caraballo thinks of most other members of the press:

Unfortunately, the majority of the modern western news media gatherers are a bunch of corporate minded lemmings, slaves to their official sources (a free-lance reporter cannot afford to question an official source- they risk being cut out of the loop at press conferences and photo opportunities). Their job is to promote the most salacious stories that news agencies can maximize the profits on, repackaging the news into "content" and peddling it to consumers on their TV, computer, and even their mobile phones, like so many widgets.

Just so. It's no wonder Caraballo is being ignored by these people -- He's actually doing the real journalism they don't have the guts, or principals, for.

[Anyone wishing to get involved with the campaign to free Jack Idema should contact Cao at this address. There's also a great deal more information on the subject at Cao's Blog and SuperPatriots.]

UK Left Go On Testosterone Alert: Maleness Detected In Marines

2005-11-29T13:17:00.000Z

The British left are outraged -- No, OUTRAGED -- by the goings on in the Her Majesty's Royal Marines.

Not content with battering the crap out of Britain's enemies since 1664, the Royal Marines, as it turns out, also have a fondness for stripping naked and battering the crap out of each other:

A film apparently showing a Royal Marine being beaten unconscious has been widely condemned.
The footage obtained by the News of the World appears to show two naked men being forced to fight each other.
One of the men is then kicked in the face, allegedly by one of his superiors in 42 Commando.

You can see the video here, and we'd advise all our readers to take a look. Because, really, this 160-second clip shows everything that is good and true about a corner of England the left haven't managed to screw up ...

... Although, for anyone too timid to watch, we here at Rottweiler Puppy are gracious enough to provide a blow-by-drunken-blow account of the action:

Scene One: A muddy field. 40 grown men have gotten horribly drunk and taken all their clothes off. (Since this involves absolutely zero homoeroticism, watching leftists will be caused to have spasms and wet themselves.) It's a good thing, then, that all this rampant masculinity is just for the enlisted riff-raff -- Commissioned officers retain their dignity by dressing up as schoolgirls, while NCOs don the stunning, blue apparel of surgeons. Complete with masks.
Scene Two: Two of the naked guys wrap rubber mats around their arms and proceed to beat the hell out of each other with them, cheered on by the happy, drunken, naked throng. The officers, of course rise above all this by ... um ... refereeing the match.
Scene Three: The mats come off. At this point, there seems to be some (intoxicated) confusion as to whether it would be a good idea for the pair to engage in a spot of bare-knuckle boxing. After staggering around drunkenly for a bit, it's decided that, no, this mightn't be wise. Instead, we're up for a spot of naked wrestling.
Scene Four: Apropos of nothing in particular, the NCO (still in full surgical gear) decides to kick one of the wrestlers in the head. This knocks the poor chap flat out unconscious, but -- Hey! -- no pain, no ... comic ending to Royal Marine home movies.

Of course, such goings on require some response from non other than the 'Conservative' Party's spokesman for homeland security. Here's Patrick Mercer, proving he's the sort of humourless pansy who won't be happy until basic training exercises eschew gunfire in favour of inclusiveness lessons:

"Just imagine a young man turning up in his unit and being made to wrestle naked in a field while his non-commissioned officers are dressed up in women's frillies. I mean, it's not very dignified stuff, is it?"

He whined.

And no, it's not very 'dignified' for a good reason -- It isn't meant to be. It's what we believe our U.S. cousins call a 'hazing'. It's a joke; a bit of a laugh between some of the most fearsome fighting men in the world. Unlike Patrick Mercer, who, by the look of him, likes to wind down with a cup of herbal tea, these guys strip naked and beat the crap out of each other.

So, question: Who would we rather stood between Great Britain and the Islamofascist hoards? Mincing Mercer and his 'dignity'? Or the bare-arsed guys whose idea of fun is kicking each other in the head?

And, question: If you were an Islamofascist, who would you rather face in battle -- This guy?

Or these?

Hmm. That's a real teaser, isn't it?

(A very warm welcome to readers of The Devil's Kitchen)
(And another warm welcome to readers of Right For Scotland)
(And yet another warm welcome to a favourite blog at Puppy Mansions, House of Dumb. Also, we're getting traffic from somewhere called Ephemeral Isle. They've been going for ... oh ... ages, but we've not encountered them before. Why is this? Hmmm? Well, anyway, people should get over to both of these destinations. Fast.)
(Trackback sent to Cao's Blog)

What If You Threw A Revolution And Nobody Came?

2005-11-28T17:25:00.000Z

Well, alright, we don't normally stoop to taking cheap shots. Nor do we make a habit of kicking people when they're down ...

... But. Come on. How could we possibly resist this:

... And now for the wide-angle shot

... And finally the caption:

'I wish they'd fitted the floor of this tent with a trap-door.'

It's days like this that remind us why we sold our souls to the VRWC.

(Hat-tip USS Neverdock)

(UPDATE: But don't expect the scumbags in MSM to show any of the above photographs. As Sweetness And Light are kind enough to point out this is how the Reuters have chosen to depict the book non-signing for posterity.

"Again, note the bizarre angle and the severe cropping. In Hollywood this is called 'protecting your star.'" Exactly.)

(Welcome readers of The Lone Voice)

Robert Hardy And The Mystery Men

2005-11-28T16:16:00.000Z

Occasionally, and on a slow news day, a BBC hacks' Bush Derangement Syndrome gets the better of him. When this occurs, a bunch of only tenuously-related facts and figures are thrown together into a piece of something that couldn't really be called 'journalism'. Well, not unless your name was Roger Hardy:

As Iraq becomes a hotter political issue in the United States, President Bush finds himself under new pressure over his handling of a range of foreign policy issues, including the "war on terror".

Hardy, a BBC 'Middle East Analyst', fails, at any point in his article, to remind readers that this 'new pressure' on Bush looks suspiciously like the 'old pressure' that exactly the same cabal of leftists have been applying since 2003. If Roger Hardy really wants to sell us on the idea that pacifists and Demscum are eager to cut and run is news, he's going to have to come up with something pretty sensational. Let's see how he manages, eh?

Some in Washington are even speaking of a crisis of American leadership in the world.

Well, 'some' in Washington are, indeed, saying such things. There's Hardy's own colleagues Matt Frei and Justin Webb, for starters. What we really want are names and dates and places -- You know, so we can be certain Hardy isn't using 'some' as a means of stroking-off the Washington end of the al-Beeb franchise. Or, for that matter, as a short-cut to grown-up journalism.

A new book by American counter-terrorism experts Daniel Benjamin and Steven Simon, The Next Attack, begins with the stark words: "We are losing."

Although Roger Hardy does eventually mention this fact, both Benjamin and Simon were Clinton cronies; one wrote the great pretender's speeches on foreign policy while the other held an even less-relevant position -- He was working for the State Department.

The two authors contend that, since the attacks of 9/11, the policies of the Bush administration have prolonged the "global insurgency" - as many now call the worldwide threat of radical Islamism - rather than curtailing it.

A 'global insurgency'? Wow. We haven't had one of those before, have we? ... Though, perhaps we really ought to point out that Bill Clinton's greatest contribution to the (then-burgeoning) WOT was to allow bin-Laden to escape on the grounds that killing him seemed too much like hard work. Since Benjamin and Simon were working on Middle Eastern matters for the 'man' who made that decision, it's worth pondering why anyone at all is listening to them now. Bluffers tip, guys: playing the armchair analysts works better if you don't make a spectacular mess of things when doing the job for real.

The recent hotel bombings in Jordan, which killed over 50 people, showed in their view, that Iraq is now the central arena of the global jihad - and that the poison is spreading to Iraq's neighbours.

Of course, the same, tired rhetoric has been trotted for every self-detonation in the post-Iraq world. Less clear, at least on the basis of this analysis, is what prompted 19 bearded crazies to fly planes into the World Trade Centre two, full years before the removal of Saddam.

The Bush administration finds itself under fire from Democrats and some Republicans in Congress, as well as from experts like Mr Benjamin and Mr Simon.

... But aren't Benjamin and Simon also Democrats -- Or does writing speeches for Rock Star Bill not qualify one for that description? Well, alright. To be fair, this is something even Roger Hardy thinks he ought to bring up. Eventually:

Both, incidentally, worked on counter-terrorism under George Bush's predecessor, Bill Clinton.

... But 'incidentally'?!! One of them penned Clinton speeches for God's sake. How is that incidental to being a card-carrying supporter of the Treason Party?

Washington bookshops are full of new critiques of the administration's policy on Iraq, several of them by former insiders.

They're also full of books like Robert Spencer's excellent The Politically Incorrect Guide to Islam (and the Crusades), though Hardy would be more likely to amputate his own leg with a cheese grater than mention something like that.

In a recent speech, Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter's national security adviser in the late 1970s, spoke of a crisis of American leadership.

If you thought taking advice from cronies of the President who lost bin-Laden was a bad idea, Robert Hardy goes one better by listening to an adviser to the President who gave America it's daily dose of humiliation for 400 days during the Iranian hostage crisis. Granted, Brzezinski might be able give us an insight or two into how best to appease one of the actual hostage takers, Iranian Thug-In-Chief Mahmoud Ahmadinejad ... But, really, if you give the BBC a barrel, they'll do the scraping.

He believes the US is "sliding towards a war with the world of Islam".

Meanwhile, the survivors of 9/11 can all join hand with the relatives of the 3000 murdered on that day and sing the praises of Presidents Carter and Clinton (not to mention their 'incidental' advisers on Mid-East policy), without whom it is doubtful that splendid, inclusive event would have taken place.

In Iraq, he argues, it was necessary to re-define success, since the original goal of creating a stable, secular democracy there was no longer a realistic option.

The fact that he says this one month after the Iraqis voted in favour of their constitution, and one month before they vote in their new government, just goes to show what kind of white-hot minds Dim Jim set to work on foreign policy.

Mr Brzezinski was speaking in Washington on the eve of a conference, bringing together Middle East experts from both the US and the region itself, which echoed and amplified these themes.

Since Hardy isn't good enough to name the conference Brzezinski attended, we're not really able to come up with anything suitably snide to say about goings on there. However, it is worth mentioning the fact when what Brzezinski is most remembered for is a certain scheme to ferment trouble among Islamic extremists in Afghanistan. So, just as Hardy doesn't bother to remind readers that Benjamin and Simon were the guys who failed to kill Osama when they had the chance, neither does he inform us that Brzezinksi was the man who radicalised him in the first place. Hmm.

Referring to the damage done to the US's image by allegations of abuse at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay, a senior intelligence expert, Frank Anderson, lamented that the US enjoyed much less worldwide legitimacy today than it had during the Cold War.

What Anderson fails to point out, of course, is that the probable reason for the lack of worldwide legitimacy has a lot to do with the fact that the U.S.'s biggest critics are no longer relying on America to protect them from annihilation. When they had a Soviet nuclear arsenal pointing at their heads, the likes of Chirac and Schroeder always seemed to be far more pro-American. Funny, that.

Another ex-CIA man, Michael Scheuer, said the claim that al-Qaeda was dead was wishful thinking.

This is, of course, absolutely true. Granted, the fact that no one in the Bush Administration has actually made such a claim kind of takes the sting out of Scheuer's criticism. Still, we're sure if anyone does take this line at some unspecified point in the future, he'll be the man to turn to for a rebuttal.

A panel on Afghanistan and Iraq felt the administration had been slow to learn the limits of "hard power" and the need to use political and economic means to combat insurgencies.

What panel? Who was on it? When did it take place? Granted, if Hardy pulls many more names like Brzezinksi's out of his hat, his credibility will slide onto a minus-scale. But. Still. It's always nice to come away from a piece of journalism with at least some relevant facts.

A leading expert on Iraq, Phebe Marr, worried about the danger that the country might disintegrate along ethnic and sectarian lines.

Well, this is something we all worry about ... Though 'worrying' and 'being openly critical of George Bush's policies' aren't quite the same thing. Are they?

The December elections in Iraq were seen as potentially positive, especially if Sunni Arabs take part in significant numbers.

Now, steady on, Roger. Surely the BBC have rules against describing anything in free Iraq as 'potentially positive'. Didn't you get the memo?

However, one expert warned that Iraq's oil industry was suffering from serious degradation of infrastructure, the politicisation of the oil ministry and "large-scale corruption".

Ooh. A mysterious 'expert'. Strangely, you might think, Roger Hardy chooses to leave it to our imaginations to work out whether this one was attending the mystery conference, sitting on the clandestine panel, or just, you know, anonymously Bush-bashing on a freelance basis.

He referred to a growing number of POIs (pissed-off Iraqis).

Doubtless, they didn't give their names either. Can anyone else see a pattern emerging here?

The Bush administration, stung by its critics, is mounting a strong counter-offensive.
In a series of speeches Mr Bush, Vice-President Dick Cheney and others are attacking the Democrats for political opportunism.

All true ... But enough of that balanced journalism crap -- Back to the leftist twisting before anyone notices the American people agree with the GOP:

Especially sensitive is the question of withdrawing some of America's troops from Iraq next year.

Sensitive? Why sensitive? The Bush Administration has always been quite clear on the fact that troops will come home when the job is done.

Mid-term elections in 2006 make this politically desirable. But the administration insists a phased withdrawal will happen only when Iraqi forces are up to the job of taking over.

But ... ?

It is sensitive to the charge that it wants to "cut and run".

Ahh. Now we get it. Roger Hardy is trying to suggest that although George Bush repeatedly states that troops will stay until the job is done, he has a super-secret desire to cut and run.

Of course, at some point, troop numbers will, indeed, be scaled down as Iraqis take over the running of their country, so is this a hint of propaganda to come from al-Beeb? That whenever we do scale back operations, the move will be greeted by shrieks of 'Saigon all over again'? If so, this will be the first war America and Britain win in reality only to lose in media. We have always lost against Eurabia.

Philip Wilcox, a former US diplomat and counter-terrorism official, told the BBC that if he were in a position of leadership he would declare victory and pull out.

Of course, Philip Wilcox probably would say that, which is why he's president of the pro-Paleswinian Foundation For Middle Eastern Peace. You know, as opposed to the adult who gets to be President of the United States.

"There's little more we can do. Our prolonged presence may forestall the natural evolution of Iraqi politics," he said.

The way the continued Jewish presence in 'Greater Palestine' forestalls the evolution of Arab politics, no doubt. Really, why is Roger Hardy listening to this buffoon? Oh, that's right. He's a colleague of Barbara Plett's.

Whether there is a partial withdrawal will depend not only on domestic US political pressures but on what happens on the ground following the December elections.

This is a very nice way of saying that if the Demscum win back control of Congress, they might try to turn Iraq into another Vietnam. We suppose a leftist can dream ...

In the meantime the administration seems to have its hands full as it seeks to dispel the sense of crisis hanging over its policies in Iraq and the wider "global insurgency".

Well, if last week's vote in the House of Representatives on the question of whether troops should stay in Iraq or run (403-3 in favour of staying the course) is anything to judge by, we'd say that the Bush Administration is probably asking: 'Crisis? What crisis?'

Readers of the BBC's web pages would also be asking this question, much to Roger Hardy's chagrin ... Only, wouldn't you know it? All mention of that landmark vote seems to have fallen into the same black hole as the names of Roger Hardy's 'experts', 'panels' and 'conferences'.

Weird how that sort of thing keeps happening to the world's largest news organisation, eh?

(UPDATE: Reader Dan points out -- "Another ex-CIA man, Michael Scheuer. A regular talking head on the BBC, along with the caption "Head of the CIA Bin Laden Unit 1997-2000". How he can be taken seriously given that history beats me, but the man is certainly not easily embarrassed." Nor, it seems, is Roger Hardy.)

Happy Thanksgiving To All RP's American Readers

2005-11-24T19:00:00.000Z

Have a really, really good day.

Happy Thanksgiving: Ian Bruce Brings The Turkey

2005-11-24T17:13:00.000Z

After the left's success in proving the U.S. used perfectly legal weapons in a perfectly legal way last week, L3 are back to make themselves look stupid all over again today:

EXPERIMENTAL missiles capable of collapsing buildings and incinerating or entombing their occupants were used by US Marines during last year's assault on Falluja.

This travesty of irrelevance comes to us via The Herald's defence correspondent, Ian Bruce, who fails to live up to his job description from the very first word. See, although the idea of the Great Satan using 'experimental' missiles against head-hackers sounds scarier than, you know, using regular ones, we're pretty sure the United States Military don't issue weapons to their troops until they've been properly tested. (The missiles, that is -- We know the troops are raring to kill Islamofascists.)

What they do, Ian, is get hold of a bunch of chimpanzees (live of course, and thinking their happy, little chimpanzee thoughts about bananas, lady chimps, tire-swings, etc.), and strap them into special monkey, missile-testing chairs inside little, monkey, missile-testing houses. And then -- get a load of this, PETA -- they fire a crapload of experimental missiles at them. So, you have little monkey arms and legs and heads flying around in all directions. If that works, then, and only then, do the missiles come out of the experimental stage for use on lower life-forms. Like Islamofascists.

Thermobaric warheads destroyed homes which had been turned into heavily fortified strongholds by insurgents in the Iraqi city.

Yay! We have a name for these non-experimental, Koranimal-entombing warheads. Therm-o-bar-ic. Doubtless we'll be hearing that a lot in the coming weeks, so best to get it learned. Only, if the 'homes' that wound up getting thermobarically-bombed had already been turned into strongholds, why doesn't Ian Bruce just call them strongholds? Hmm? It couldn't be that destroying homes sounds more brutal? Because homes are the sort of things we normally associate with civilians? Speaking of which ...

A similar weapon, used by the Russians in Chechnya, resulted in the deaths of many civilians.

... So a completely different army, operating with different (but similar) weapons, have killed civilians in a completely different theatre of war? This is certainly interesting, but relevant -- How?

Thermobaric weapons have also been reported as causing crushing injuries such as concussions, collapsed lungs, internal bleeding and burst eardrums.

Well, it would doubtless be a happier world for leftists if the U.S. only built missiles that caused no injuries at all ... But somehow we suspect this is about as likely as Ian Bruce bothering to point out that these horrific injuries are actually a bug -- The intended feature of the missiles is to kill.

Confirmation of their battlefield use follows last week's controversy over the legality of employing white phosphorus munitions during the offensive.

The use of white phosphorous, we will remember, has acquired the same status for leftists as cigarette smoking -- It's perfectly legal, but liberals insist on whining about it anyway ... Though, admittedly, if one were to blow the former substance in their faces, there's at least an outside chance it would get them to shut up.

The shoulder-fired weapons were developed for use in urban combat after the success of thermobaric bombs dropped by strike aircraft on caves containing al Qaeda militants in Afghanistan in 2001.

Yes, folks, it's yet another example of that low, American cunning: the bastards have worked out that if their thermobaric bombs killed large numbers of bearded crazies in 2001, it might be fun to come up with a portable version that does the same job three years later. So it's kind of like a lethal version of the iPod.

Fired by a single infantryman at close range against buildings, the warheads produce "a shockwave of unparalleled destructive power", according to a US marine report seen by The Herald.

... And the point is -- What? That we should be researching missiles that aren't destructive? That would probably go down well a treat with Ian Bruce, but, really, what's the betting most Marines are thinking along the lines of 'kill the enemy, go home alive'?

It adds: "One unit disintegrated a large, one-storey masonry-type building with one round from 100 metres. They were extremely impressed."

As are we. Let's hope there were plenty of Islamofascists inside it at the time.

The weapons were designed by a US naval research centre at Indian Head, Maryland, and rushed into service last year.

That would be the place with all the chimpanzees with hearing problems and collapsed lungs.

The US Marine Corps Gazette reported that "gunners became expert at determining which wall to shoot to cause the roof to collapse and crush the insurgents fortified inside interior rooms".

Damn. Not only do they develop the new missiles, but then they learn how to use them. Is there no end to deviousness of these people?

It added: "We found that our assaultmen had first to fire a dual-purpose, high-explosive rocket in order to create a hole in the wall or building. This blast was immediately followed by a thermobaric round that would incinerate the target or literally level the structure."

Okay, okay. These things are bloody dangerous. We get that. What's sort of troubling, though, is just why someone like Ian Bruce chooses to repeat all this stuff. Somehow, he doesn't strike us as being the sort of two-fisted fighting man who gets a kick out of military hardware. Point of fact, and judging by his prose style, his name's the only giveaway he's a man at all.

The marines justify the use of the new weapon by stating:

No. The Marines (capital M there, you pen-pushing pansy) don't have to 'justify' anything at all. They're just stating a simple set of facts.

"The rationale for this approach is straightforward. Marines could employ highly effective blast weapons prior to entering houses that had become pillboxes, not homes.
"The economic cost of house replacement is not comparable to American lives."

Or, in other words, 'we'd prefer to kill the enemy as opposed to being killed by them'. Maybe that sounds like a good strategy, but, wait, because Ian Bruce is about to call on one of the great military minds of our time in order to dispute its worth:

According to Human Rights Watch, thermobaric weapons "kill and injure in a particularly brutal manner over a wide area. In urban settings it is very difficult to limit the effect of this weapon to combatants." The group claims it is "virtually impossible for civilians to take shelter from their destructive effect".

Of course, when one considers that all Falluja's civilians were 'taking shelter' at a distance of ten miles before the Marines went into the city, it's a safe bet they coped. In fact, this should be something even the brilliant minds at Human Rights Watch could work out:

Marine stands 100 yards away from a building and fires a missile at it
Marine survives unscathed.

Now, do the civilians sitting in tents ten miles away:

(a) Survive too?
(b) Suffer horrible, eardrum bursting, lung-imploding injuries and drop dead?

Hmm. That's a tough one, isn't it?

John Pike, of GlobalSecurity, a defence think-tank, said: "These thermobaric weapons have generated a fair amount of public misunderstanding, and have been made out to be a peculiarly horrible means of killing people. If it turned out that, in practice, the primary effect was indeed incendiary, there might be some problems under the international laws of armed conflict."

Well, maybe so. Though, as with white phosphorus, no one has explained to our satisfaction precisely why we shouldn't enjoy our insurgents nice and crispy ... But we digress. See, the whole, delightful point about these thermobaric missiles is that they're not incendiary devices.

Flamethrowers and incendiary grenades containing white phosphorus are illegal under the Geneva conventions when used on civilians, civilian property or on military targets near civilian populations.

Yes, but we're talking about thermobaric missiles, which aren't incendiary devices at all:

A US military spokesman confirmed that the experimental warheads had been used in Falluja, but denied that they contravened the laws of war.

No. They're not 'experimental', Ian. Remember those fabulous, exploding monkeys over at the US naval research centre at Indian Head, Maryland? Can't you at least show some respect for poor Cheetah's sacrifice? Otherwise, your concern over the fate of imploding Islamofascists might strike someone as a case of straining the gnat to swallow the camel.

Anyway, we apologise for interrupting -- Someone with a pair of balls was about to say something interesting:

"They are enhanced blast-effect weapons, not incendiaries or fuel-air munitions. They were used to take out heavily fortified positions where insurgents had dug in deep and could not be tackled without risking considerable casualties among coalition forces."

To recap, then: The U.S. Military have been 'caught' using perfectly legal, non-incendiary missiles to knock down whole housefuls of Islamonazis. No crimes have been committed and no civilians were harmed. Human Rights Watch, however, have done a bit of whining about how crap it is that we can't all hold hands for a rendition of I'd Like To Teach The World To Sing.

Does Ian Bwuce have anything else to add before this non-story kicks itself into the long grass?

At least 50 marines and an estimated 1200 insurgents died during the weeks-long battle for the Sunni Triangle city.

So. That's at least 50 reasons to hope Human Rights Watch got at least one thing right: 'Thermobaric weapons kill and injure in a particularly brutal manner'.

(Hat-tip The Devil's Kitchen)

(Welcome readers of A Tangled Web)
(Welcome readers of The Right Nation)

Free Jack Idema Blogburst

2005-11-23T10:56:00.000Z

For a few weeks now, we've written about the illegal imprisonment and torture suffered by U.S. special forces soldier Jack Idema and his men. While it's outrageous that any U.S. soldier should be treated in this way, in Idema's case this is a double-blow because men with his skills are needed, and needed desperately, if we're to stand a chance of winning the War On Terror.

Now, certainly, we must be able to deploy the kind of massed force that actually took down regimes like Saddam's. But, because of the nature of our enemy and its ability to function inside even the most stable of countries, what we also need are people who can operate at a local level in places like Afghanistan, gaining the trust and respect of Muslims in these countries in order to help us root out terrorists before they have a chance to strike.

It should go without saying that people with these skills are few and far between. It is, frankly, ludicrous that sections of the U.S.'s intelligence community have conspired to imprison one of the very people who can get this job done on our behalf.

Earlier this week, Idema managed to get to a satellite-phone in order to do an interview on Mike Levine's Expert Witness radio show. Here he is, describing how he arrived in Taleban-held Afghanistan:

Well I flew into Afghanistan, I was one of the very first Americans in Afghanistan. I packed my bags just a week after 9/11. Hit the ground in October, we started bombing on October 12th. I joined with the permission of the Northern Alliance, commissioned as an officer in the Northern alliance, which is the United Front Military forces. I brought a team in to bring in air drops, one of the guys Lt. Col of Defense Intelligence agency was wounded in the first few days, critically wounded. One of the other guys was critically wounded, I medivac'd them out, I came back in. I stayed with the Northern alliance for one straight year–from the north all the way from Kalikata (sp?) the very north of Afghanistan all the way to the south we took the country over.

[This is from a transcript of the show available at Cao's Blog. You can also listen to the whole broadcast here.]

In the kind of world where military commanders seek assurances from lawyers before going into battle (as actually happened with the British Army prior to the invasion of Iraq), it shouldn't be difficult to work out that men like Jack Idema are a major asset.

Here is someone who can hit the ground running barely three weeks after the outbreak of hostilities, hook up with local forces, and start killing our enemies. And let us not forget the extent to which special forces operatives like Idema were responsible for bringing about the downfall of the Taleban -- Without their efforts, it would have taken the conventional military far longer to organise a full-scale invasion along the lines of the force that eventually removed Saddam Hussein. To say that such operations involve great risks for the people involved is an understatement, and it seems almost surreal that Idema should find himself imprisoned at the behest of the FBI after his great service to the U.S., to Afghanistan and to all the free world.

The cause of the problem, of course, is what Idema derides as 'our new policy of appeasement and let’s all shake hands and kiss each other again'; a policy that has resulted in someone like Gulbuddin Hekmatyar being removed from terrorist watch-lists. For anyone unfamiliar with the name, Hekmatyar is the Islamofascist who was forced to flee Afghanistan during the Taleban era because his brutality was actually worse than theirs. Hekmatyar is now one of the people the U.S. wish to include in the new Afghanistan.

Idema, though, has a better idea of how to deal with hardcore head-choppers:

People forget about the fact that people were diving out windows on 911 to avoid being burned to death. This war is a war of attrition -- That means you kill the enemy. You don't make peace with 'em, you don't make nice with 'em, you don't take 'em out for a steak dinner -- You kill 'em. And believe me, these people deserve to die. They are the worst terrorists on the face of the earth. Look what they did on 911, and that is only one, small part of what they want to do to us.

Yes. Exactly right. And yet the FBI have conspired to keep a man like Jack Idema imprisoned so they can make deals with scum like Hekmatyar. Unbelievable.

[Anyone wishing to get involved with the campaign to free Jack Idema should contact Cao at this address. There's also a great deal more information on the subject at Cao's Blog and SuperPatriots.]

(Cross-posted at The Wide Awakes)
(Welcome readers of Making Headlines, My News 'n Ideas and The City Troll)

Breaking News: al-Zarqawi -- Gotcha?

2005-11-21T02:33:00.000Z

[Scroll down for updates]

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that Iraqi head-hacker in chief al-Zarqawi may have finally run out of goats to molest, courtesy of a U.S. raid in Mosul:

The Elaph Arab media website reported on Sunday that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the head of the al-Qaida in Iraq terror group, may have been killed in Iraq on Sunday afternoon when eight terrorists blew themselves up in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul.
The unconfirmed report claimed that the explosions occurred while coalition forces surrounded the house in which al-Zarqawi was hiding. American and Iraqi forces are looking into the report.

DNA tests on the pleasingly-charred carcasses are underway ... Only, haven't we heard this, like, a gazillion times before? Well, no, though there have been several reports of the head-scumbag's demise, that's true. And then there was the time U.S. troops shot the swine in the arse.

But. This time around the news appears to be getting wider coverage than the Arab fleapits these stories usually circulate in. So that's one thing.

Another is the fact that al-Zarqawi has been losing popularity among 'moderate' Muslims over the last few weeks. First, there was the letter from his al-Qaeda high-ups instructing him to lay off the mass-murder of children (bad for PR, apparently), and then the crowds of 200,000 demonstrating against him in Jordan. Could it be the case that al-Zarqawi's bloodlust has finally turned him into a liability to the Islamonazi cause? So that's a second reason to be cheerful.

A third is the condemnation of al-Zarqawi from his own family. What took them so long? Hmm? Maybe they have reason not to fear the prodigal's payback?

On the minus side, however, the White House are saying this:

But Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman, said reports of al-Zarqawi's death were "highly unlikely and not credible."

Cross your fingers, people. We'll keep you updated through the night.

(Hat-tips Cao's Blog and Stop The ACLU)

3:30 GMT: The Telegraph are reporting less pessimistic language out of Washington:

A US official said soldiers were trying to determine if the terrorist leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was among the dead.
[...]
In Washington, an official said the identities of the terror suspects killed were unknown. Asked if they could include Zarqawi, he replied: "There are efforts under way to determine if he was killed."

This is from Washington itself, as opposed to the earlier remarks, which came from a Presidential aide en route with GW to Mongolia. It's certainly beginning to look as though the U.S. regards the swine's death as a definite possibility.

4:03 GMT: Iraq the Model are reporting: Zarqawi Probably Killed! Also, more from the Washington source:

"Efforts are being made to determine who was killed and if Zarqawi was among them," a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said late Sunday.
The same official told United Press International that efforts to confirm Zarqawi's death were "not a response to media reports but rather to what coalition forces found on the ground," the wire service said.

... So this is filtering out anonymously. Interesting.

4:25 GMT: The L.A. Times is reporting something interesting:

After Saturday's gun battle, Nineveh Gov. Duraid Kishmoula told some reporters in Mosul that al-Zarqawi was believed to have been inside the house. He later retracted that statement, however.

Also, please spare a thought for the four Iraqi cops who were killed in the six hour gunfight. Unlike the eight charred carcasses whose DNA is currently of interest to the free world, these were brave and decent human beings who gave their lives in defence of their country.

4:33 GMT: And this, which suggests Nineveh Gov. Duraid Kishmoula wasn't the only one with intel on Zarqawi:

On Saturday, police Brigadier General Said Ahmed al-Jubouri said the raid was launched after a tip that top al-Qaeda operatives, possibly including al-Zarqawi, were in the house in the northeastern part of the city.

At the very least, it looks as though we got some al-Qaeda high-ups.

5:58 GMT: Still nothing definite. The Times Of India, though, offers an interesting analysis:

That al-Zarqawi would be in Mosul, far to the north of Baghdad, is plausible -- an almost constant series of U.S.-led offensives against insurgents in Anbar province have made places like Ar Ramadi, Al Fallujah, and Al Hadithah dangerous for high-value targets like the extremist network leader.
In addition, a fierce and desperate firefight would be characteristic of efforts by his entourage to defend al-Zarqawi.
[...]
It is interesting that the attack came on the heels of Jordan's intense attack on within its borders and on anyone linked to al-Zarqawi. This followed the bombings of three hotels in Amman. It is speculative -- but not unreasonable --to assume that the Jordanians, during their crackdown, secured intelligence on the location of al-Zarqawi's command cell, the report said.

We'll keep everyone updated on this.

6:16 GMT: ABC have some interesting reaction from locals:

American soldiers controlled the site Sunday, and residents said helicopters flew over the area throughout the day. Some residents said the tight security was reminiscent of the July 2003 operation in which Saddam Hussein's sons, Odai and Qusai, were killed in Mosul.

7:32 GMT No news yet, but here's more from what we're assuming is that anonymous Washington source:

U.S. military officials believe it is possible al-Zarqawi was killed in the raid but will not know with certainty until a series of DNA tests are run, said a U.S. military intelligence official involved in Iraqi issues.
There is a "thirty percent" chance that one of the bodies is al-Zarqawi's, he said. But he warned: "We've had dry holes before."
Over the past month, the official said, there has been a series of raids following a surge in tips from Iraqis unhappy with al-Zarqawi and his operation.

So there's a one-in-three chance. Good odds.

12:05 pm GMT: All the news seems to be recycling at the moment. The only development seems to be that the troops have scooped the Islamofascists up into an ash tray and left the scene in search of a DNA testing kit. Fingers crossed.

We'll be around for another four hours or so -- we'll update this on this post, so scroll down if we post about anything else.

We'll be around for another four hours or so -- we'll update this on this post, so scroll down if we post about anything else.

(Welcome readers of A Devil's Kitchen, who, we were overjoyed to see, have been mentioned over at Misha's)

6:09 GMT: Breaking news: Iraq's Foreign Minister seems certain that Zarqawi's the kind of toast you wouldn't want to spread marmalade on:

Al-Qaida in Iraq chief Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is believed to have been killed in a military operation in the northern Iraqi city of Mosul, Iraq’s foreign minister said today.
Hoshyar Zebari told the official Petra news agency during a visit to Moscow that Iraqi authorities were testing DNA samples from several corpses of insurgents killed in a weekend gunfight in Mosul.

Oh, but this is looking better and better, isn't it?

8:20 GMT: (Welcome readers of Euphoric Reality and Netscape News. Yes, we are scanning the web for news on whether the Moonbat Commander-In-Chief is pleasingly, satisfyingly and hilariously dead. But, being mere humans, the Rottweiler Puppy Crew expect to fall into unconsciousness at around 3:00 a.m. GMT.

Clearly, this mere 30-hour shift at the computer demonstrates the decadent failings of infidel chickenhawks everywhere ... However. We challenge the Holy Warriors to come up with a joke as funny as the following on -8 hours' sleep:

Question: How many Islamofascists can you legally fit into a Mini?
Answer: Five. One in the driver's seat, one in the passenger's seat, two in the back seat and Abu al-Zarqawi in the ash-tray.

8:45 GMT: No, no, no. Nothing definite yet. However, al-killalltheinfidelscumforthemoongodsdelight are reporting the following (and grudgingly, no doubt):

Iraq's Foreign Minister Hoshiyar Zebari said on Monday [that's today -- don't you goat-scratchers know how to update your webpages?] that senior members of al-Zarqawi group were in a house in the city of Mosul when US and Iraqi forces stormed [No. They stayed outside until the self-detonating was done -- You can't 'storm' a building full of satisfyingly-charred corpses -- Try 'walked in' or 'strolled in laughing, watching the scumbags smoulder'] it on Saturday, causing some of those inside to blow themselves up, but it could not yet be determined whether al-Zarqawi was among those killed.
"We don't have confirmation," Zebari told Reuters during a visit to Moscow.
"In my view, I would say there must have been some key leaders of the insurgency, especially the fundamentalists - al-Qaida type of people - so I would not be surprised if he could be one of those who blew himself up," he said.
"We know that American and Iraqi forces ... surrounded a house where there was fierce resistance and when the American and Iraqi forces jointly tried to storm the building the occupants blew themselves up, they committed suicide," Zebari said.
"They believe there must have been some key leaders from the terrorists, from the fundamentalists who committed suicide instead of handing themselves up."
Zebari said only DNA tests could confirm whether al-Zarqawi was among those killed and said checks were being made.

Can anyone check in and tell us how long it takes (minimum) to actually perform one of these DNA tests? (And, no, we're bloody well not going to use Google -- Excellent as the kuffar search engine undoubtedly is, after 26 hours without sleep, WE NEED LINKS.)

10:50 GMT: Now news is ... um ... no news. But:

Al Qaida chief of operations in Iraq, Abu Musab al Zarqawi, wears a suicide bomb belt so he can kill himself if capture appears imminent - a practice that apparently drove U.S. forces to suspect that he was one of three terrorists who blew themselves up after they surrounded a safehouse in Mosul on Saturday.
"He has sworn never to be taken alive by the U.S.," ABC newsman Brian Ross reported Monday, adding: "He actually travels with his own suicide explosive belt."

Well, now, ABC have been the least sceptical news source on this story since the go get ... But -- Hey Abu! -- Alive, dead, in little, blackened pieces scraped off the ceiling -- It's all the same to us. All anyone on the progressive side of the seventh century cares about right now are the tests on hairs and fibres.

But just think how much simpler things would be if only these creatures would act like real men. You know, wearing uniforms. And dog-tags.

11:12 GMT: Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. Damn. DAMN:

BAGHDAD, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab Zarqawi was not among the seven men killed in a raid on a house in Mosul, U.S. military officials said Monday.

We'll stick around until other sources start reporting this. If it's true, well -- hey -- that's the way it goes sometimes ... But Abu had better remember -- He needs to be lucky every second of every minute of every day of his ever-miserable, ever-shortening life.

We only need to get lucky the once.

BAGHDAD, Nov. 21 (UPI) -- Al-Qaida in Iraq leader Abu Musab Zarqawi was not among the seven men killed in a raid on a house in Mosul, U.S. military officials said Monday.

We'll stick around until other sources start reporting this. If it's true, well -- hey! -- that's the way it goes ... But Abu had better remember -- He needs to be lucky every second of every minute of every day of his ever-miserable, ever-shortening life.

We only need to get lucky the once.

1:15 GMT: Oh. Wait. Something strange is happening in Britain. The Independent (of rational thought) is reporting that:

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the most wanted man in the Middle East, may have been killed in a firefight in Iraq, according to the country's Foreign Minister.

Now, for those non-British readers who've been lucky enough not to have encountered The Independent before, just imagine a world in which the New York Times was considered moderate ... A world in which the BBC was considered balanced -- In such an alternate reality The Independent would be regarded as the moonbat paper of choice. Ohhhh, but why are we going to such lengths to push the Indie's left-wing credentials? All anyone really needs to do is point out that Robert 'I'd have beaten me up' Fisk writes for them and leave the rest to the imagination.

But we digress. The real, post-defining question is: 'Why would the Indie suggest their hero was charcoal?'

There are four possibilities:

The Indie are idiots (true)
The Indie are slow on the uptake (true)
The Indie want al-Zarqawi to pop out of a box in Mosul like the blood-splattered toy no candy-gathering child ever wanted to receive, in order to trumpet the headline 'Minuteman Lives!' (Possible)
The Indie have accepted the reality of al-Zarqawi's one-way trip to the land of hot pokers, and feel they might as well 'fess up (possible, and with pleasing background imagery to boot)

Decide for yourselves. Oh, and don't forget to indulge in all the delightful, pro-Islamofascist propaganda while you're over there. We, ourselves, especially enjoyed the part where U.S. soldiers open fire on bleeding disaster victims -- The thought of so many tinfoil hats being worn in one place always does that to us.

Anyway, the Abu -- Charcoal-or-Flesh? Game is definitely back on.

2:15 GMT: Alright. We've been at this for 28 hours, and enough, as they say, is enough. We'll be back tomorrow with updates on all the things we've missed while sleeping. Ugh. Even deciding whether or not Islamonazis are dead is an irritation.

From Bias To Silence: BBC Pullout From Truth

2005-11-20T09:41:00.000Z

Now here's a thing. On Thursday, the two successive lead stories on the BBC's Americas page dealt with Vice President Dick Cheney's attack on anti-war Democrats and, next, John Murtha's response to this by calling for troops to be withdrawn from Iraq immediately.

Demonstrating the kind of subtlety they're famed for, the BBC's piece on Cheney features a photograph in which the VP looks as though he's on the receiving end of a surprise rectal examination, while the ever-idiotic Justin Webb frets:

Mr Cheney resorted to language far stronger than any used before by the Bush administration.

Over in Murthasville, however, the Great Statesman (whose picture occupies three times as much space as Cheney's) is depicted in thoughtful/dignified mode. Justin Webb, meanwhile, pops up again, this time to point out the following:

Mr Murtha's remarks have dealt a further blow to the Bush administration's attempt to rally support for the war in Iraq, the BBC's Justin Webb in Washington says.
Until now comments the Troops Out movement in America has received support only on the political fringes, but that has changed in a dramatic fashion, our correspondent says.

Curiously, you might think, Webb doesn't describe Murtha as resorting 'to language far stronger than any used before' by Democrats. Nor, for that matter, did he point out, when commenting on Cheney's remarks, that the Republican's new, tougher line could help galvanise the GOP base and 'deal a blow to Democrats' as they attempt to wriggle away from their own voting record on Iraq.

Still, even if the BBC indulge in incredibly biased reporting, at least they're following this very important political story. That's something, we suppose:

WASHINGTON -- In a maneuver to strike at Iraq war critics, the Republican-led House engineered a vote Friday on a resolution to pull U.S. troops immediately from Iraq. The resolution was defeated nearly unanimously.
The House voted 403-3 against the resolution after Democratic leaders dismissed the measure as a political stunt that distorted the intentions of a lawmaker who called Thursday for a pullout. The three votes in favor were cast by Democrats.

This news, you'll notice, reaches us via The Seattle Times -- We'd be happy to quote from the BBC, but -- wouldn't you know it? -- the story that so captivated them on Thursday, and continued to be of interest as late as 21:56 GMT on Friday, is suddenly of no interest at all. Why might that be? Hmm?

Well, it's certainly true that since John Murtha wasn't one of the three Democrats voting for a troop pullout, he'll likely go down in history as the buffoon who helped vote down a motion he, himself, proposed only a day earlier. It would be difficult for even Justin Webb to spin that one into a victory for the anti-war lobby.

But it gets worse. See, if the left's line about falling support for the war, quagmire, civil war between Sunnis and Shias, missing WMDs, and so on really added up to an un-winnable war, you would expect to see more than three Democrats voting in favour of a pullout. That the vote to stay the course was almost unanimous effectively highlights what Republicans have believed all along; namely, that Democrat whining about the war was aimed at earning the left some no-cost political capital at the expense of the Bush Presidency.

By forcing this to a vote, Republicans obliged Democrats to state, for the record, whether they really think the Iraq mission is a bust. Now, plainly, this was never going to be a vote the Democrats could win -- Republicans are in the majority, so even if all Democrats voted for a pullout, they wouldn't get one. This, in turn, meant that if Democrats had pushed the surrender button, they'd have appeared weak on defence in the eyes of an electorate who will, in 2006 and 2008, be voting on what most of us believe will be a far more stable Iraq. It's one thing for Murtha to grab a few, cheap headlines bitching at Dick Cheney on a slow day in November, and quite another for all House Democrats to signal their disapproval of a mission, only to have that decision come back to haunt them in the form of future Republican taunts that they were willing to run out on a mission that actually succeeded. So this explains why Murtha and company decided to shut up rather than put up.

Only, this isn't the only problem Friday's vote throws up for the anti-war left. See, over the last three years, moonbats have been marching, chanting, chaining themselves to railings, and, generally, making as much noise as possible to sound their disapproval of the Iraqi liberation. This has all been amplified by nattering, MSM elitists like Justin Webb, who've tried harder than would have seemed possible in the pre-9/11 world to destroy the Bush Presidency and end the War On Terror.

All this effort has a single purpose -- To effect a change in the voting habits of the people who actually decide whether the U.S. runs or stays the course.

Well, if Friday's vote is anything to go by, it's pretty clear that the anti-war lobby, after three years of near-superhuman effort, have failed, and failed absolutely, to alter even the Democrat Party's position on Iraq. That, more than anything else, must be a bitter, bitter pill for Beeboids to swallow.

Still, swallow it they should. Much as we're sure the likes of Justin Webb would rather be reporting on the latest Gore-bin Laden summit, he's paid to report the facts whether they make him happy or not. If this includes humiliating climbdowns from people like Murtha and an anti-war lobby whose efforts put no dent at all in Democrat voting strategies, then he should take a deep breath and damn well get typing.

Instead, we get complete silence about Friday's vote, and, from the BBC's Adam Brookes, something far, far worse than silence. Here he is, yesterday, reporting on President Bush's visit to an air base in South Korea:

John Murtha, a Democratic Congressman from Pennsylvania, is the critic of the moment. He has described the Iraq effort as "a flawed policy wrapped in illusion", and has called for withdrawal.
Why should Mr Bush care about a lone Democrat? Because Murtha is a decorated veteran, a hawk, and he previously supported the war. Most importantly, he's seen as close to the military. Is Murtha speaking for the army? Some in Washington think so.

Well, no, Adam. In fact, and as Fridays vote showed, Murtha isn't even speaking for himself. Not that anyone relying on the BBC for their news would be aware of that.

(Trackback sent to Cao's Blog, where there's a trackback party going on)

Cheney And GOP To Democrats: Put Up Or Shut Up

2005-11-18T23:31:00.000Z

[Scroll down for updates]

It's been a strange year for U.S. Republicans, and mainly because the Democrat- and MSM-led attacks on the Bush Presidency have gone mostly unopposed by the Administration itself. For a while now, we here at Puppy Mansions have been wondering why G.W. hasn't fought back against his critics -- Perhaps the President really meant it when he vowed to heal the red state/blue state divide. Or perhaps, being an honourable man, Bush felt it beneath himself to attack a bunch of shrieking, hysterical women.

Whatever the reasons for the Administration's hesitancy, there comes a time when even the most decent of men have to walk right up to the overwrought shemales in question ("Oh my God, oh my God, it's a quagmire, I tell you, a quagmire! We're all going to dieeeee!") and administer a good, hard slap across the face:

The president and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone - but we're not going to sit by and let them rewrite history.
We're going to continue throwing their own words back at them. And far more important, we're going to continue sending a consistent message to the men and women who are fighting the war on terror in Iraq, Afghanistan, and many other fronts.
We can never say enough how much we appreciate them, and how proud they make us.

This is, of course, exactly the kind of thing U.S. conservatives voted for in November 2004, and exactly the kind of thing that conservatives everywhere have thought the Bush Administration ought to have been saying since Democrats first came down with collective memory loss over our reasons for liberating Iraq.

Back in the day, of course, Democrats were presented with the same intelligence on Saddam's regime as everyone else. Fearing accusations of cowardice, sedition, betrayal, and, well, all the things Democrats are actually guilty of, the U.S.'s treason party voted in favour of removing Saddam. Only, and here's the thing: for leftists, politics is a never-ending battle between the things they really believe and the things they're forced to claim they support in order to avoid being voted out of office. Or lynched.

Accordingly, no sooner had Democrats grudgingly offered their support to a war against the very Baathists they'd rather be appeasing, than they settled themselves in for the long, hard, anti-war haul.

This unpatriotic struggle, with which we're all painfully familiar, involves a chip-chip-chipping away at the American people's resolve to fight a long war, while publicly proclaiming 'support for our troops'. So we have the 'grim milestones' of American dead (500 ... 1000 ... 2000 -- Yaaaay! Paaarty time); the whining and seething over missing WMDs; the screeches of 'Quagmire!' that accompany each and every Islamofascist's self-detonation; the grovelling and appeasing over every (false) accusation of torture or a Koran-in-peril.

Only, remember folks -- the left support our troops!

Well, then, it seems that after Dick Cheney's straight-talking on Wednesday, tonight's going to be the night we get to find out where Democrats really stand. This from our fellow Wide Awakers at Euphoric Reality:

Rep. J. D. Hayworth has called for a vote on the House floor tonight by 1900 on the U.S. Congress’ position on the war in Iraq. This would force Democrats to go on record with a position instead of voting one way and then constantly talking the other way. Fast pullout like whiny babies with no backbone? Or supporting our troops and their mission?

Yes, you read that correctly -- The Bush Administration is, right now, in the process of demanding that Democrats either put up or shut up. Kit's liveblogging this, and we'll keep you updated on how the vote's going throughout the night.

UPDATE (sort of):

While we're waiting on news from the U.S., here's a good reason why we should all support the WOT:

Mom,
Be my voice. I want this message heard. It is mine and my platoon’s to the country. A man I know lost his legs the other night. He is in another company in our batallion. I can no longer be silent after watching the sacrifices made by Iraqis and Americans everyday. Send it to a congressman if you have to. Send it to FOX news if you have to. Let this message be heard please…
My fellow Americans, I have a task for those with the courage and fortitude to take it. I have a message that needs not fall on deaf ears. A vision the blind need to see. I am not a political man nor one with great wisdom. I am just a soldier who finds himself helping rebuild a country that he helped liberate a couple years ago.
I have watched on television how the American public questions why their mothers, fathers, brothers, and sisters are fighting and dying in a country 9000 miles away from their own soil. Take the word of a soldier, for that is all I am, that our cause is a noble one. The reason we are here is one worth fighting for. A cause that has been the most costly and sought after cause in our small span of existence on our little planet. Bought in blood and paid for by those brave enough to give the ultimate sacrifice to obtain it. A right that is given to every man, woman, and child I believe by God. I am talking of freedom.
Freedom. One word but yet countless words could never capture it’s true meaning or power. “For those who have fought for it, freedom has a taste the protected will never know.” I read that once and it couldn’t be more true. It’s not the average American’s fault that he or she is “blind and deaf” to the taste of freedom. Most Americans are born into their God-given right so it is all they ever know. I was once one of them. I would even dare to say that it isn’t surprising that they take for granted what they have had all their life. My experiences in the military however opened my eyes to the truth.
Ironically you will find the biggest outcries of opposition to our cause from those who have had no military experience and haven’t had to fight for freedom. I challenge all of those who are daring enough to question such a noble cause to come here for just a month and see it first hand. I have a feeling that many voices would be silenced.
I watched Cindy Sheehan sit on the President’s lawn and say that America isn’t worth dying for. Later she corrected herself and said Iraq isn’t worth dying for. She badmouthed all that her son had fought and died for. I bet he is rolling over in his grave.
Ladies and gentleman I ask you this. What if you lived in a country that wasn’t free? What if someone told you when you could have heat, electricity, and water? What if you had no sewage systems so human waste flowed into the streets? What if someone would kill you for bad-mouthing your government? What if you weren’t allowed to watch TV, connect to the internet, or have cell phones unless under extreme censorship? What if you couldn’t put shoes on your child’s feet?
You need not have a great understanding of the world but rather common sense to realize that it is our duty as HUMAN BEINGS to free the oppressed. If you lived that way would you not want someone to help you????
The Iraqis pour into the streets to wave at us and when we liberated the cities during the war they gathered in the thousands to cheer, hug and kiss us. It was what the soldiers in WW2 experienced, yet no one questioned their cause!! Saddam was no better than Hitler! He tortured and killed thousands of innocent people. We are heroes over here, yet Americans badmouth our President for having us here.
Every police station here has a dozen or more memorials for officers that were murdered trying to ensure that their people live free. These are husbands, fathers, and sons killed every day. What if it were your country? What would your choice be? Everything we fight for is worth the blood that may be shed. The media never reports the true HEROISM I witness everyday in the Iraqis. Yes, there are bad one’s here, but I assure you they are a minuscule percent. Yet they are a number big enough to cause worry in this country’s future.
I have watched brave souls give their all and lose their lives and limbs for this cause. I will no longer stand silent and let the “deaf and blind” be the only voice shouting. Stonewall Jackson once said, “All that I have, all that I am is at the service of the country.” For these brave souls who gave the ultimate sacrifice, including your son Cindy Sheehan, I will shout till I can no longer. These men and women are heroes. Their spirit lives on in their military and they will never be forgotten. They did not die in vain but rather for a cause that is larger than all of us.
My fellow countrymen and women, we are not overseas for our country alone but also another. We are here to spread democracy and freedom to those who KNOW the true taste of it because they fight for it everyday. You can see the desire in their eyes and I am honored to fight alongside them as an Infantryman in the 101st Airborne.
Freedom is not free, but yet it is everyone’s right to have. Ironic, isn’t it? That is why we are here. Though you will always have the skeptics, I know that most of our military will agree with this message. Please, at the request of this soldier spread this message to all you know. We are in Operation Iraqi Freedom and that is our goal. It is a cause that I and thousands of others stand ready to pay the ultimate sacrifice for because, Cindy Sheehan, freedom is worth dying for, no matter what country it is! And after the world is free only then can we hope to have peace.
SGT XXX and 1st Platoon
101st Airborne Division (Air Assault)

Well, alright. If SGT XXX had been British, his letter home would doubtless have been lighter on the 'Moms' and complaints about 'badmouthing' Blair, and heavier on the sarcasm, snark, and general, all-round don't-give-a-shitness. But. Still. There's British and American blood staining the sand in Iraq. The blood of husbands, wives, sons, daughters.

Our two countries are bound together in this fight, and if we don't stay the course, the shames of Suez and Vietnam will look trivial in comparison to the dignity the left will strip us of if we quit Iraq.

We. Must. Finish. This. Task.

Thatisall. Check back for updates -- Puppy Mansions will be open until 6:00 a.m. U.K. time.

(Welcome readers of Euphoric Reality)

UDATE: We're still waiting on the result of the vote. However. Should anyone feel like abandoning The Puppy for the less ... um ... partisan shores of the BBC, you'll be disappointed to learn that the world's largest news organisation haven't noticed the year's biggest U.S. political story. Nevermind, though. You can always tune into the more important stuff. Like ... er ... a dead sparrow in Holland. Your licence fees at work, folks.

UPDATE: As Kit notes, CNN appear to be suffering from a similar Dead Sparrow Syndrome (DSS). Damn, but don't these lefty MSM types hate it when they've been outmanoeuvred?

UDATE: Oh God. The Democrats are demanding FIVE MINUTES of 'debate' each. On the plus-side, though, this gives us a chance to make toasted cheese sandwiches and watch some TV. Back in an hour, hopefully with an update on how the BBC's Justin Webb's head has exploded.

UDATE: Democrats talking in a desperate effort to avoid voting. Meanwhile, the world's largest news organisation remains unmoved. Top Americas story: UN refuses to visit Gitmo. Typical.

UDATE: Game On. Looks like we're going to the vote.

UDATE: BBC News 24 have noticed happenings in Washington. In response, they've pulled in an ex-Clinton advisor to argue that American politics is in meltdown, President Bush is a failure, and that, anyway, there's a civil war in Iraq. So there. In other news, the Dutch sparrow is still dead.

UPDATE: No End But Victory are reporting that this isn't the final vote, but a procedural one. The vote stands at 203-203, with only 6 Demscum left to vote. Good news for our side. After this, another hour or so of debate and then the final showdown. We'll keep any fellow British insomniacs posted as things happen. Oh, and in spite of the best efforts of Dutch paramedics, it's not looking good for the sparrow.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, over at Euphoric Reality, Kit seems to be losing patience with the bloviations of U.S. politicians: "I’m running out of ways to say "Republicans are mature individuals who understand the price of freedom and Democrats are stupid, whiny freaks who wouldn’t know freedom if it was handed to them." Oh, wait…it is handed to them. By soldiers." Heh. Well said. (Republicans won the procedural vote, btw. And over in the alternate reality inhabited by BBC reporters, our feathered friend still ain't moving.)

UPDATE: Demscum are now trotting out sob-stories about military deaths. Bluffer's tip: This only works if you're not the party who accuses the American military of being worse than the Nazis, Stalin and Pol Pot. Republican Joel Hefley says he'll give up his speaking time if others will as well. He just wants to vote. Demscum, of course, would rather gnaw off their own legs than miss out on an opportunity to twitter pointlessly on about how much they care. In other news, the BBC report that the UN still aren't going to Gitmo and poor tweety still isn't moving.

UPDATE: Game on (no, really). Fifteen minute vote. We'll keep you posted.

UPDATE: After six hours of seething, whining, and hand-wringing, almost all Demscum voted not to cut and run. Republicans played this one superbly: not only will the left have a harder time pissing and moaning about Iraq in future, but, with any luck, this will also have the effect of cutting them off from their own loopy, moonbat base. All in all, it's good to see Republicans fighting back. As for the BBC -- Still suffering from a bad case of DSS. Funny, but that always seems to happen when their lefty friend in the treason party aren't on the wining side.

BBC Hack Endorses Gang-Rape: Clichy-sous-Sick, Sick, Sick

2005-11-17T18:39:00.000Z

One of the problems with the left's enduring love affair with Islamofascism has always been their inability to snag any interviews with the 'insurgents' they eulogise from afar. For this reason, the French intifada, limited as it is to the destruction of cars and disabled, old ladies, is proving to be a huge draw for MSM. Indeed, lefty hand-wringers from all over the globe now have the opportunity to 'understand the pain' of Islamopaths without running the risk of feeling it as their heads are sawn off at the end of a panel discussion.

But. As the BBC's Hugh Schofield discovers to the cost of his credibility, when you get up close and personal with some of Allah's angry little helpers, the bastards mightn't have anything coherent to say:

"What is it, what is it you're waiting for to start the fire? / The years go by, but everything is still the same / Which makes me ask, how much longer can it last?"
The words are from the 1995 song They Don't Understand, by one of France's best-known rap singers, Joey Starr of the group NTM.

Well, granted, Mr. Starr knows how to produce a workmanlike enough blingalong, with plenty of claptrap about fires and urban decay. Middle-class black kids have been getting rich off of this stuff for decades, though on the strength of Joey's outing here, there's nothing especially noteworthy about what he's doing. So why does Hugh Schofield think this is relevant to recent happenings in France?

He was far from alone in providing a grim prophecy of the events of the last three weeks.

Ohhh. Riiiight. So way back in 1995, when everyone figured poor, misunderstood Joey Starr was just trying to make a bucketload of cash by recycling the low end of U.S. culture for the dregs of the French, he was actually offering sage-like advice on how to avoid social meltdown? Then truly, a prophet is never accepted in his own land ...

... Which would be understandable except Starr's isn't a voice that cries alone in the wilderness. As Hugh Schofield is quick to point out, many, many other visionaries predicted the French riots. For instance, there's this missive from the Fonky Family:

"The state is screwing us / Well you know, we are going to defend ourselves / Don't try to understand."

But, Fonkies, Hugh Schofield wants to understand. In fact, he's so desperate to empathise with your pain he's about to produce one of the silliest lines in modern journalism:

Or this - uncannily accurate - from Alpha 5.20: "Clichy-sous-Bois, it's gangsta gangsta / And Aulnay-sous-Bois, it's gangsta gangsta."

Well, maybe Alpha 5.20's efforts would have been a tad more prophetic if their lyrics had read: "Citron, Renault, it's gangsta gangsta / Limping granny, it's gangsta, gangsta". But we suppose you can't have everything ...

... And it's at this point we really would be tempted to leave Hugh Schofield dangling on the end of his own stupidity. Only, wouldn't you know it, his next move is to cover-up something altogether nastier:

It is undeniable that some of the lyrics of French rap songs - as in America - are shocking to the conservative-minded.
In Brigitte - Cop's Wife, Ministere A.M.E.R indulges in a pornographic fantasy which will not be to most tastes.

See -- The only people who might object to French rap's 'uncannily accurate' social critiques are small-minded conservatives, and then only on the grounds that we're -- what? -- a bunch of prudes who blush at pornography? Blue rinse, Mary Whitehouse types tut-tutting to themselves about bad language, the youth of today, etc.?

Well, no. The actual reason people objected to the contents of 'Brigitte -- Cop's Wife' had less to do with 'tastes', and more to do with -- well, judge for yourselves:

"Who's to rescue her? Not her father with a beer belly, he 'd have preferred a Swede, a Dane, a Gaul, a punk skunk with a mohawk. Too bad; 10 blacks are storming her. /
Another woman takes a beating, this time her name's Brigitte. She's a cop's wife."

Yes. That's right. The fine, upstanding young men with the 'grim prophecies' and 'uncannily accurate' lyrics about life in the French ghettos are also the sort of people who glorify the multiple gang-rapes of white women by Muslims.

Now, maybe Hugh Schofield is the kind of guy who takes this kind of stuff in his stride (and remember, fellow Brits -- it's our licence fees that pay this 'man's' salary), but, really, taking offence at this has nothing to do with prudery or conservatism -- There are no human beings outside of the moral slum that is Islamofascism who think a song about ten men raping a sobbing, defenceless woman is the kind of thing you'd like to get up and dance to.

All of which begs two questions:

Why is the BBC's Hugh Schofield attempting to put a pleasant gloss on the kind of people who egg on race-driven gang rapes?
Why doesn't the BBC's Hugh Schofield, driven as he is by the desire to promote the 'uncanny accuracy' of French-Muslim rappers' diatribes, encourage his own wife, or daughter, to take an unaccompanied stroll through Clichy-sous-Bois or Aulnay-sous-Bois?

In answer to the second question (only leftists have an answer to the first): Hugh would be forced to confront the emotional fallout from gang-raped members of his own family (you know, as opposed to a cop's). But. On the upside, if the now-disbanded Ministere A.M.E.R. ever felt like making a comeback, Hugh could provide their Islamofascist fanbase with a brand, new theme song.

Altogether now:

"Who's to rescue her? Not her father who works in MSM, he 'd have preferred a social worker, a special-needs teacher, a male nurse, an ad-man with a private pension. Too bad; 10 blacks are storming her. / Another woman takes a beating, this time her name's Mrs. Schofield. She's a BBC wife."

So tell us, Hugh, is this the kind of 'uncanny accuracy' you approve of? Or are you some kind of conservative prude?

(Welcome readers of House of Dumb)
(Welcom readers of UK Commentators)

Official -- This Guy's Off Osama's Christmas Card List

2005-11-17T15:29:00.000Z

Terrorist Scum To Be Kicked Out

Well I can hardly believe that the gutless shower of cowards who run this nation has agreed to kick out some untermenchen savage that was spouting hate. Still I wont believe it until this turd has been flushed out of the UK.

So says the excellent Lone Voice, who we've been meaning to say something nice about for a while. Why have we never got around to doing so? Hell, we're damned if we know -- Even the simple stuff, like figuring out why we no longer seem to be writing for Stop the ACLU baffles us. Disorganisation has always been a problem at Puppy Mansions. Indeed, during our schooldays, teachers would routinely warn: 'If you don't pull your socks up, you'll find yourselves no longer writing for a group blog just before it become insanely successful.' But did we listen? Did we learn? Um ... Nope.

Anyway, since we find ourselves relying, more and more, on The Lone Voice for a daily roundup of events at the British end of the Global Jihad (not to mention all the good news concerning the deaths of Islamopaths in Iraq), we feel it's time to push Puppyites in its direction. Go. Now.

Free Jack Idema Blogburst: Week Two

2005-11-16T06:12:00.000Z

We've been talking about the case of U.S. Special Services soldier Jack Idema for a while now, but one of the things we haven't dealt with in any depth are the reasons Jack and his men are being held.

The official story, of course, is that they were running an illegal prison facility, and were guilty of torturing inmates for information. These allegations have already been proven untrue, but before we get into the reasons why Jack and his team still aren't free, it's worth taking a look at a press release Jack issued on the subject of the interrogation techniques he and his team were using:

We kept them awake with 24 hours of non-stop questioning, played loud Rock and Roll music and offered to let them work for us if they would turn over on the others. All that we questioned turned on each other. When one didn't, we did not beat him, we simple confronted him with two that were cooperating and he quickly decided to join the same team.
Once they told us a little we gave them non-stop Miranda soda and restaurant kabob and promises of a new job working against terrorism.
The soldiers in Iraq that claim their abuse of prisoners was ordered by MI (Military Intelligence) are liars. You only have a few days at most to get actionable intelligence. Let a terrorist sit in a cell and you lose the initiative to find the others. Beat the terrorists and he admits to anything or nothing. Again you lose. Humiliate the terrorist and he hates you and feeds you lies.
Your only way to get the terrorists to talk is sleep deprivation, promises for freedom if he gives up the other terrorists, and convincing the terrorist you are his friend.

There are a couple of interesting things about this passage.

First, there's the clear sense that Idema is a man who knows what he is doing (or was doing until his arrest cut short these anti-terrorist operations). Far from being the gung-ho fantasist that MSM were describing back in 2004, Jack and his team showed restraint and professionalism in their treatment of captured Islamopaths in order to get the information they needed.

Second, there's the stark contrast between how Idema handled prisoners and the brutal treatment dealt out him and his team by F.B.I./ex-Taliban 'authorities' prior to his trial:

Shortly after their [Jack and his team's] arrest, they were subjected to varying degrees of torture and interrogation, apparently determined by rank. Jack Idema was repeatedly beaten by, and in the presence of- Amrullah at NDS Headquarters, as was Lieutenant Rasuli. A palace official was personally aware of and authorizing, at a minimum, Idema's initial torture at NDS Headquarters by Amrullah, with FBI agents in close proximity and directing the interrogation.
During the following days and nights Idema was tortured with boiling water, starvation, threats of death, and assault with various implements (such as wire cables and rubber whips), resulting in broken ribs, a separated sternum, torn rotator cuffs, hemorrhaged eyes, multiple concussions, lacerations, contusions, and bruises. Although the U.S. Embassy later had medical reports indicating the extent of the torture, Sandra Ingram, Assistant U.S. Consul DOS Kabul, ordered the reports rewritten to tone down the extent of the injuries.

This is absolutely outrageous, but to understand why it's happening, we need to take a step back from the high ideals that took men like Jack Idema into the War On Terror. The game here, you see, is realpolitik:

This [Jack's arrest] was orchestrated by Taliban and Hezb-i-Islami forces loyal to Mullah Omar and Gulbideen Hekmatyar, with the knowledge and approval of then Interim President Hamid Karzai. The purpose of this was to prevent a high level Hezb-i-Islami terrorist (Sidiq) from being transferred to permanent U.S. military custody and exposing the depth and breadth of the high level plot. In return, Karzai would receive full support and votes from Hekmatyar controlled areas such as the Konar Province (he later did).

In other words, Idema and his men were so effective at capturing Islamofascist scum that they risked exposing the full extent to which the Afghan government was infected with Taliban sympathisers. In an effort to prevent this scandal breaking, and to protect the backroom deals being made between the fanatics and Karzai, Idema was betrayed by the F.B.I. in Afghanistan, who were working to ensure that the boat didn't get rocked.

If this seems like the worst of it, however, the F.B.I. went one better after factions opposed to the Taliban in Afghanistan forced a re-trial of Idema's case:

Approximately 40 days later, the Appeals Court met again, and repeated that all members of Task Force Saber/7 were "completely innocent," but that they could not be released because of pressure and coercion by the U.S. Embassy and FBI. Further, the Appeals Court cleared them of all torture charges after hearing covertly recorded statements of the alleged "victims" and seeing evidence linking the "victims" to terrorist leaders and terror plots.

So this is where we're at:

Three U.S. Special Services personnel are being held, illegally, in Afghanistan. They've been subjected to appalling tortures, and to eight (and counting) assassination attempts by members of al-Qaeda, eager to collect the $250,000 bounty placed on Idema's head by none other than Osama bin Laden. Further, these men have all been cleared of the crimes for which they were initially put on trial, and are being held solely because of pressure from those sections of the U.S. government who still cling to a political strategy that should have been killed off one bright, September morning four years ago.

See, here's the thing that the F.B.I. and sections of the Afghan government don't seem to grasp: You cannot cut deals with Islamopaths. You cannot democratise Islamopaths. You cannot civilise Islamopaths. These 'people' are an implacable evil, and must be opposed at every turn.

Jack Idema and his men understood this, and set out to remove the terrorist presence from Afghanistan. If the response from some quarters of the U.S. administration is to see them illegally imprisoned and tortured, then this isn't just a shocking betrayal of brave and honourable men -- It also means that we're setting ourselves up to hand power back to the very monsters who masterminded 9/11 and 7/7.

It's difficult to conceive of both a moral and tactical collapse more profound. Or more lethal.

[Anyone wishing to know more about this case should visit Cao's Blog or SuperPatriots. If you want to join the weekly Free Jack Idema Blogburst -- and right now, we need all the help we can get -- email Cao. Also, we'd like to welcome fellow British blog Making Headlines to the team. It's good to have you on board.]

John Simpson: Sympathy For A Devil

2005-11-15T12:52:00.000Z

Having decided that the French intifada is, perhaps, best ignored now the body(work) count is down to a manageable 300-or-so cars a night, the BBC's John Simpson has returned to the job he loves -- Roaming the Middle East sneering at U.S. foreign policy:

The bombings in the Jordanian capital, Amman, last week provided King Abdullah with a melancholy victory - the kind he certainly did not want.

We're pretty sure the victims of said bombings weren't too pleased about having their lives cut short by Islamopaths either. But, as we'll discover, Simpson isn't all that interested in what ordinary Jordanians think about terrorism -- For him, all that really matters is poor Abdullah's 'melancholy'. Oh, and the opportunity to get in a few digs at America's expense.

In 2002, during the run-up to the US invasion of neighbouring Iraq, he warned the US that Jordan might suffer from a wave of anger and violence if Saddam Hussein were overthrown.

... And one attack after two, full years is a 'wave of anger and violence'? Well, if you say so, John. Only, it's worth bearing in mind that Islamopaths are also bringing carnage to completely neutral countries like Thailand, as well as the anti-war ones like France. Indeed, there are so few nations that haven't been treated to taste of the Global Jihad that virtually anyone could win money betting on an Islamist attack, particularly if the time-frame for it to happen in was as large as two years. For Simpson's argument to succeed, in fact, all he has to do is wait for a bomb(er) to go off in a pro-war country, then pick through the rubble and body parts while nattering about Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq, Iraq.

King Abdullah, like his father King Hussein before him, is a quiet, resolute, loyal man: a good and thoughtful ally, and not at all the kind of man whose views should be swept aside without thinking.

Well, King Abdullah, like his dear, old father before him, is actually a dictator. Granted, he's not as sadistic as some, but, still, what's the betting that he's never going to be democracy's biggest fan?

But they were.

Really? How does Simpson know this? Perhaps the U.S. and Britain were very diplomatic about telling Abdullah to take his absolute monarchy and stick it where the 21st century doesn't shine.

The prevailing view in the White House and the Department of Defense was that the invasion of Iraq would begin a process by which democracy would spread fast throughout the Middle East.

This is still the White House's view (just in case Simpson's use of past tense is throwing anyone off here). Though, to listen to MSM tell the story of the run up to the liberation, you could quite easily be forgiven for thinking the only thing which mattered to George Bush were WMDs and oil.

Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, the second and third most senior figures in the Pentagon at the time, assured the president that people like King Abdullah were simply suffering the equivalent of pre-match nerves.

And, let's face it, the prospect of losing one's hold on absolute power is enough to make any crazed dictator nervous ... So we shouldn't lose sight of the fact that since Wolfowitz and Feith were tasked with putting an end to Middle Eastern dictatorships, it's more than likely their conversation with Abdullah, as with the Saudis, amounted to little more than inviting him to keep his nose out of America's business in exchange for democracy reaching his country last.

Once the dominoes started falling, they said, no-one would remember the previous anxieties.

Did they say that? Really? Using those, exact words? Or is Simpson paraphrasing in an effort to make the nasty, Jewish neocons seem far more reckless than they really are?

But it was King Abdullah, and not Mr Wolfowitz or Mr Feith, who got it right.

Oh yes? Why's that, then? Because of last week's bombings, the first in Jordan since the Iraqi liberation? Or just because -- Because neocons have to be wrong! So there!

And it will not be much of a solace to the king to recall that both men have been eased out of their jobs in the administration of President George W Bush.

Well, even if we allow Simpson to get away with suggesting that Feith left under a cloud (any evidence for that, John?), Paul Wolfowitz is now running the World Bank. To most observers, that move looked a lot more like 'promotion' than 'easing out'.

Just one domino has fallen so far.

That's funny. Counting Iraq, Afghanistan and Lebanon, not to mention the Presidential elections in Egypt and Palestine, the (admittedly limited) reforms in Saudi Arabia and the suffrage of women in Kuwait, we'd put the number at three outright democracies and improvements in another four. (Though Jordan, of course, has less real democracy than Iran.)

It was certainly an achievement, though it was won only because its former Prime Minister, Rafik Hariri, was murdered in a huge car-bombing in February.

Do readers begin to see how this works? When something goes wrong (as with the Amman bombings), Simpson struggles to pin the blame on U.S. foreign policy. By contrast, when neocons score an unequivocal success, Simpson twists himself into knots trying to show that America really wasn't involved at all. Well. Apart from the immense diplomatic pressure the U.S. placed on Syria. And George Bush's not-so-veiled threat of using force should Assad not pull his army out of Lebanon. And the rather obvious fact that these moves emboldened the Lebanese people to seize back control of their country.

The demonstrations which forced the Syrians out were certainly a reminder of the revolutions which brought democracy to Soviet-dominated Eastern Europe in 1989.

And while we're on the subject of 'reminders', let's not forget that the sight of Saddam Hussein huddled in a cell might have given Boy Assad something to think about as he considered calling America's bluff.

But any spark of hope in the White House that this was the start of a process quickly died away.

Well, there were the elections in Lebanon. Then the first elections in Egypt for 25 years. Then the ratification of Iraq's constitution. These huge successes notwithstanding, did the U.S. really expect a replay of 1989 within months of Iraq's liberation? Or is it just that by creating this impression, Simpson gets to make the whole project look like a bit of a failure?

Neither Mr Wolfowitz nor Mr Feith, as they urged President Bush on to invade Iraq, seemed to reflect that the Middle East and Eastern Europe might be different in kind.

Yet again Simpson just pulls assumptions out of thin air. Did he sit in on Presidential briefings? Does he know, for a fact, that George Bush sees no difference between the Middle East and Europe? Granted, it must be hard for a swivel-eyed leftist like Simpson to resist the temptation to ascribe all the world's ills to secretive cabals of Jooos whispering in the President's ear, but for the sake of his last, remaining shreds of credibility, he ought to at least try.

Anyone who suggested that the circumstances were not the same in Iraq was silenced: do you really mean, the pro-invasionists would say, that the Arab world is not ready for democracy?

Judging by the 64% turnout in Iraq's constitutional referendum, not to mention all the people who've voted in Afghanistan, Egypt and Lebanon, we'd say the pro-liberationists actually made the correct call. Predictably, though, Simpson chooses to side with the evil despot:

King Abdullah understood what was wrong with that argument - no-one wants democracy to be foisted on them by outsiders.

There's so much wrong with this statement, it's difficult to know where to begin. Perhaps by pointing out, yet again, that His Royal Dictatorness probably would be averse to any democracy-foisting. Then we could draw Simpson's attention to the fact that in 1945 America democratised the whole of Western Europe and Japan by force of arms. Moreover, if we factor in the countries like Russia, Poland and South Africa that were essentially strongarmed into democracy through political and economic pressure, the point Abdullah's making looks even more absurd.

See, the simple fact of it is that wherever and whenever human beings have had the chance at freedom, they've taken it. This is the truth that President Bush lives by -- If the scumbag running Jordan really feels like disputing it, why doesn't he put his money where his mouth is and hold an election?

By overthrowing Saddam, he said, the Americans would endanger Iraq's ultra-fragile stability, and risk spreading the violence to Jordan.

What 'stability' was this, then? The one with the rape rooms, mass graves and little Kurdish children choking to death on mustard gas? Because, you know, this kind of setup always looks more attractive to despots and left-wing journalists than it does to the people living under such regimes. Funny, that.

The Americans have long believed that King Abdullah and his father underestimated the strength of their own position.

True, but what's the betting the U.S. would rather see a free and democratic Jordan? Bluffers tip, Abdullah: being the least of evils doesn't mean decent people like you.

True, that position has proved to be remarkably enduring.

As dictatorships tend to be when no one dares oppose them.

In January 1991, at the start of the first Gulf War, I sat at dinner with King Hussein, and listened as he spoke in gloomy terms about his likely future.
He seemed to expect that he would have to flee Jordan and spend the rest of his life on his estate outside London.

We know, we know. The life of an evil dictator is never an easy one ... But, remind us, why does Simpson think we should care?

Instead, of course, King Hussein lived out his life peacefully in Jordan, and his death was marked by a huge outpouring of affection and grief.

Meanwhile, back in the eighties, the Soviets used to put on these marvellous parades every May Day, with thousands of happy, cheering Russians filling Red Square with marching bands and military hardware. Oddly enough, though, these 'outpourings of ... affection' for the CCCP came to a rather abrupt end after ordinary Russians got a taste for real freedom.

King Abdullah, his son, has managed to maintain that support for the monarchy, while edging the country towards greater democracy.

Of course, this 'edging' takes place quite slowly, doesn't it? So slowly, in fact, that unless you have Simpson's trained, journalistic eye, you might come away thinking that Jordan's royal family are aiming for free elections some time around the year 2256.

But it is a difficult and delicate process.

Of course it is. So difficult and delicate, in fact, that getting around to holding those elections is something that has eluded tyrants since the dawn of time. But here's a thing: it doesn't always elude the people who overthrow them.

Last week's bombs in Amman, which killed 57 people, have shown how vulnerable Jordan is to the kind of violence which has become a daily reality in Iraq.

... And 7/7 showed how vulnerable Britain is to it as well. Funnily enough, though, we're not planning on scrapping our whole democratic process as a consequence.

The US newspaper publisher Knight Ridder, which is one of the best sources of information there, reports that one of the suicide bombers involved in the attacks, Safaa Mohammed Ali, seems to have been captured a year ago by US marines in Falluja.
He was then released because he seemed to pose no threat to security.

Well, okay. We let the wrong one go. It happens. Maybe if people like Simpson didn't spend so much time whining about Korans-in-peril, it wouldn't happen so often, but there it is.

Ali was captured in the same mosque in Falluja where a cameraman filmed a US marine shooting dead a wounded prisoner.

Hold it right there. The brave Marine in question did no such thing. In fact, he shot a jihadist who was playing dead, likely planning on conducting an impromptu martyrdom operation the moment the soldier turned his back. Whether or not Simpson grasps this point (and as a war correspondent for the world's largest news organisation he really should do), to become a prisoner you have to utter the magic words, 'I surrender'. Did the jihadist in question do that? No. Then he was still in the game and the Marine's kill was a perfectly legitimate one.

That, according to Knight Ridder's investigation, increased his hatred of the US.

Huh? How would Knight Ridders know that? Are they channelling dead suicide bombers? Because, you know, since Safaa Mohammed Ali was trying to kill Americans on the streets of Fallujah a year prior to his self-detonation, there's a strong case for arguing he had anger management issues well before the Marine Simpson tries to slime made that head-shot.

It is precisely the kind of story which King Abdullah and his advisers can point to as evidence for their deep anxieties about the region.

Well, now, isn't this just the strangest thing -- That Abdullah and his cronies are quite happy to think of Saddam feeding innocent Iraqis feet first into shredders, but when American foreign policy rocks the good ship Stability, suddenly they're plagued by all kinds of 'anxieties'. Looked at this way, it's obvious what really goes through the mind of the average Middle Eastern despot: it isn't the violence per se these scumbags fret over. They just want to make sure they're the ones inflicting it.

If, as now seems likely, British and US forces pull out of Iraq either mostly or completely by the end of next year, it takes a real optimist to believe that the fighting there will quickly come to an end.

Probably true, but by then the democratically elected Iraqi government will have enough of its own troops on the ground to handle matters. Granted, the killing of innocents may well continue, but the difference between crimes committed against the state and crimes committed by it couldn't be more striking. Is Simpson really so blinded by hatred for the Bush administration that he can't see how important this distinction is?

The Iraqi government thinks, or wants to think, that the resistance draws its support and its force from the fact that foreign troops patrol the streets of Iraq's towns and cities, and are involved in daily acts of confrontation and violence with ordinary Iraqis - the kind of thing which helped turn Safaa Mohammed Ali into a suicide bomber.

This is Simpson at his most manipulative. Note, for instance, how he presents Abdullah's pronouncements as sage-like advice, but when it comes to the views of the region's only democratically-elected government, they 'think, or want to think'. Then there's the bit about coalition forces getting confrontational and violent with 'ordinary Iraqis'. Is that true? Are U.S. and British troops dragging perfectly innocent citizens off the street and attacking them? Or does 'ordinary', for Simpson, have the same meaning as 'crazed jihadist' does for the rest of us? It certainly seems that way, because his next move is to run this bizarre assertion straight into the example of Safaa the splodydoper, who was just your average, gun-toting psychopath before American violence pushed him over the edge.

If there are no foreign troops in Iraq, the argument goes, then Iraqis can sort out their problems between themselves.

Well, the Iraqi government aren't making this argument -- They've repeatedly stated they want our forces to stay put until their own security is up and running. Nor, for that matter, is the Bush administration, which is firmly resolved to stay until the job in Iraq is complete. So who, pray tell, is running with this line about letting Iraqis solve their problems without Western help?

King Abdullah understood what was wrong with that argument - no-one wants democracy to be foisted on them by outsiders.

Oh. That's right. It's King Abdullah. The power-hungry despot.

King Abdullah knows that, either way, the next year or so will be a difficult time for his country and his government.

Alright, we realise that John Simpson regards Abdullah as a regular fountain of knowledge, but how, exactly, does King Scumbag 'know' this? And how does Simpson know he knows it?

He certainly does not want Jordan to become the Cambodia of this war.

Hmm. That's certainly a risk, isn't it? We mean, a couple of Islamists self-detonate (as they frequently do) and before you know it, a genocidal dictator has swept to power, declared Year Zero and slaughtered a quarter of your population. Well, it could happen.

Having been ignored and proved right, all he can do now is to hope for the best.

Simpson, meanwhile, continues to give the impression that having been ignored and proved wrong, he's determined to hope for the very worst.

(Update: It seems we're not the only ones to take exception to Simpson's drivel -- Ed over at Talking Hoarsely has the following (and more) to say: "This is madness- Bush-derangement syndrome- such that Simpson has to use a murderous (but one must say isolated, in the Jordanian context) bombing, twisting it unfairly in with Abdullah's reasoning over two years ago, all to bash a couple of people to whom Simpson feels ideological and maybe personal antagonism." Exactly right.)

Dilemma For British Inmates: Ribbed Or Featherlite?

2005-11-14T11:08:00.000Z

The BBC present their readers with yet another fine example of balanced reporting today. This time around, they've decided to broach the problems faced by prison inmates whose sex-lives are plagued by ... um ... intimate infections:

Male and female prisoners should be given free condoms as part of measures to halt the spread of HIV and hepatitis in UK jails, two charities have said.
Prison healthcare is inconsistent and often sub-standard, said the Prison Reform Trust and National Aids Trust.
Over half of prisons have no sexual health policy despite HIV and hepatitis C being commonplace, the survey of prison healthcare managers found.

It's really quite difficult to know where to begin, isn't it? Perhaps by wondering why female prisoners would need condoms at all. We know the BBC are all for sex-equality, but what with the lack of access to any condom-wearers, you'd think the absurdity of this demand would penetrate even the thickest of Beeboid skulls.

Then, of course, there's the fact that ALL British prisons do, in fact, have a robust, two-tier policy designed to prevent the spread of STDs among inmates. Here's how it works:

Tier One: You're not supposed to have sex.
Tier Two: You broke the rules, had sex, and now you're poxed -- Tough.

Sadly, the BBC fail to appreciate the simple beauty of this approach, and put-off mention of the whole prison-as-punishment argument in favour of wailing about the high rates of disease among ... well ... the hookers and junkies who end up being sent to prison in the first place. (Not that any of these people could have been infected prior to being locked-up, or anything.)

Having whined and fretted for 250 words, however, it's necessary to do that balance-thing:

But the suggestion of free condoms for prisoners has been condemned by the right-wing Conservative Way Forward group.
Its spokesman Andre Walker told the BBC: "Most people who've been victims of crime don't expect prisoners to be going into jail and having sex and getting involved in relationships.
"I think it's entirely unacceptable and the encouragement of it is pretty wrong in the eyes of most right-thinking individuals."

All good, sensible stuff, and kudos to Andre Walker for pointing out that the victims of crime mightn't be pleased to think their persecutors were pleasuring each other in safety at taxpayers' expense. But. Andre only gets 68 words out of 500 in which to get his point across, which hardly seems fair, and especially considering he's expressing an opinion the majority of Britons would likely agree with.

Then there's the 'right-wing' tag the BBC use to describe Andre's group. Why? Do they fear readers might not grasp that people with a name like 'Conservative Way Forward' (we provide a link because the BBC can't be bothered to) weren't exactly pushing a Gramscian agenda? Not with Margaret Thatcher and Norman Tebbit at the helm, at any rate. And why, while we're on this subject, don't the Prison Reform Trust (who we don't need to link to, since the BBC do it for us) get slapped with the label 'left-wing'? Hmm? Because although the BBC try to pass them off as some kind of impartial health charity, a visit to their website reveals little gems like this one:

PRT hopes to obtain funding for a programme of work examining how the Government could better promote the economic, social and political rights of prisoners.

We could be wrong about this, but somehow we doubt the Prison Reform Trust will be joining the VRWC anytime soon.

(Welcome readers of The Devil's Kitchen)

Al-Zawahiri: Getting Confrontational With Other People's Mums

2005-11-14T09:22:00.000Z

Now here's a thing. It turns out that al-Qaeda, flushed with success over the Global Jihad's British leg on 7/7, have turned their attention from commuters to our Head of State:

AL-QAEDA has threatened the Queen by naming her as "one of the severest enemies of Islam" in a video message to justify the July bombings in London.
The warning has been passed by MI5 to the Queen's protection team after it obtained the unexpurgated version of a video issued by Al-Qaeda after the 7/7 attacks. Parts of it were broadcast on Al-Jazeera, the Arabic satellite channel.
In the video, Ayman al- Zawahiri, second-in-command to Osama Bin Laden, targets the Queen as ultimately responsible for Britain's "crusader laws" and denounces her as an enemy of Muslims.

Well, alright, if al-Zawahiri didn't stick his head out of a cave every month or so and sentence a few perfectly innocent people to death, the War On Terror just wouldn't be the same. And, granted, you can only threaten to kill American Crusaders, George Bush, Tony Blair and Evil Joooos so many times before all your home videos begin to sound the same ...

... But the Queen? What did she do? Open the wrong hospital wing? Shake hands with the wrong granny? Because, you know, last time we checked, the British Crown wasn't responsible for any laws, crusader-orientated or otherwise, and hasn't been for more than a century. It's difficult to believe that even someone as unhinged as al-Zawahiri doesn't grasp this, so what's going on?

Well, although al-Qaeda have been itching to take a pop at Britain since their plot to fly a passenger jet into Parliament on 9/11 went south, it's likely that the July bombings have given their campaign against us fresh impetus.

See, Britain is the first country to have actually grown its own suicide bombers (thanks multiculturalists!). It's a fair bet that the bearded lunatics running things from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border find themselves wondering how many more crazies there are ululating their way around the north of England. More to point, now they've been alerted to the presence of what amounts to the small army they never knew they had, the Islamopaths are probably eager to find out how much damage the bastard spawn of L3's failed race policies can do if properly motivated.

Hence: they pick a high-profile target, do some ranting about 'crusader laws' to motivate the faithful, and see if one of their pet Koranimals can get lucky with a backpack in a crowd of pensioners as Her Majesty accepts a bouquet from a smiling six-year-old. Charming.

... Though, this story isn't all doom and gloom. If nothing else, it illustrates the absolute futility of trying to appease the ROP. We will remember, after all, that just over a week ago Prince Charles was informing everyone of how he intended to dress President Bush down over America's 'confrontational' attitude toward Islam.

This, then, is the ultimate cautionary tale against Dhimmitude -- Say nice things about the Religion of Pieces and they'll respond by trying to murder your mother.

(Hat-tip Stop The ACLU)

Meet The New Treason Party

2005-11-12T18:13:00.000Z

After 9/11, many former Democrats faced up to the fact that, however much they'd spoken up for the virtues of diversity and understanding, what they really wanted to do, as the Twin Towers fell, was see bin Laden stuffed feet first into a cannon and fired at a wall.

As reactions go, this was entirely understandable, and many British conservatives expected to see droves of like-minded centre-leftists joining us in the WOT after 7/7. At the very least, we'd hoped that the sort of British conservatives who've hitherto wasted their time spitting venom in Tony Blair's direction over the WOT would realise that, yes, we are at war, and yes, the threat posed by Islamopaths is a serious one.

Some hope:

Tony Blair has accused some MPs of being out of touch with the public and of failing to face the terror threat.
Mr Blair met his Cabinet after a vote on anti-terror plans brought his first Commons defeat as prime minister.
He told ministers there was a "worrying gap between parts of Parliament and the reality of the terrorist threat and public opinion".
MPs on Wednesday rejected plans to allow police to detain terror suspects for up to 90 days without charge.

The Big Story here, at least as far as MSM are concerned, is that enough Labour MPs rebelled over the vote to deny Tony Blair a victory. This is true enough, though, really, the fact that a bunch of pinko, bag-lady look-alikes like Claire Short and Diane Abbott decided to stab Britain in the back is about surprising as learning that George Galloway managed to crawl out of the woodwork in order to get in his own vote for the treason brigades.

What is shocking is the absolutely craven behaviour of our own 'Conservative' Party, who voted against the government, ostensibly on the grounds that being held for 90 days would infringe the human rights of Islamopaths. As we've said before, this line of attack places the Conservative Party to the left of Blair and, ideologically speaking, on the same ground as hard-left extremists like Galloway, Amnesty 'Gulag' International, and Liberty.

How did this happen? How did the Conservative Party in Britain fall so far from its core principles that it gives aid and succour to our enemies in a time of war? There are, it seems, two reasons for this betrayal:

There's the argument the Conservative Party actually ran with: that detaining bearded crazies for 90 days would be a terrible blow to their human rights. No matter that 70% of British people disagree with them on this point, and no matter that police and security services are the ones who actually pushed for the 90-day rule: Conservative MPs seem to believe that the only voices worth listening to are those of human rights hustlers and, well, George Galloway.

Only, here's the thing: if we're talking human rights, Britons surely have the right not to get blown to bits by crazed jihadists. More to the point, we also have the right not to find ourselves at the centre of a smallpox outbreak, or standing at ground zero of a nuclear blast. Considering Iran's antics of late, there really is no scenario too nightmarish to contemplate. So what's more important? The civil liberties of a few bearded crazies? Or the fight against terrorism?

To listen to the 'Conservative' Party explain their treacherous behaviour, you'd think this was a trick question.

Then there's what we here at Puppy Mansions like to think of as the Tedious Old Git's Argument. This criticism of the anti-terror measures draws on the notion that since we've managed with the 14-day detention period for hundreds of years, there seems little point in increasing it now. What the proponents of this line like to do, and in lieu of a more robust defence, is whip out a violin and start banging on about the Magna Carta or the Gunpowder Plot or the contents of Queen Victoria's underwear drawer. Or whatever.

There are two points that easily counter this historically revisionist drivel.

First off, there's the fact that Britain, in times past, was a good deal heavier handed with those suspected of treason -- In WWII, we simply interred all suspect foreigners for the duration of hostilities. Going further back, to Guy Fawkes and co., the modus operandi of the British state involved extracting confessions with thumbscrews followed by a trip to the scaffold for some hanging, drawing and quartering. Granted, such methods were highly effective, but since we neither want to lock-up 2 million Muslims, nor throw bearded crazies onto the rack in order to find out what they know, the civilised alternatives might take, you know, a little longer. Like 90 days.

Second, there's the fact that while many Conservative Members of Parliament remain stuck in the distant past, the terrorists we face today are willing to avail themselves of the wonders of modern technology. Unlike the 'good' old days of battling the IRA, this isn't a local fight with terrorists operating exclusively within British territories. This time around, we're fighting a truly global war, and this makes intelligence gathering much more difficult -- Really, it shouldn't take too much brainpower to work out that an investigation will take longer if evidence is stored in heavily-encrypted files on a jihadist's hard drive, and that, further, when the codes are broken, it turns out his orders came from somewhere in Pakistan.

What all this means is that the march of time has been far kinder to our enemies than it has to our ability to do battle with them. The effect of their easy movement around the globe, mass communications and encryption technologies, when coupled with our own (correct) refusal to extract information by force -- all of this -- means that if we play by 19th century rules, we're going to lose.

So what's going on? Does Britain's 'Conservative' Party really not grasp any of this? Do they really not understand the level of threat we face? Or the difficulties of counter-terrorism in the modern age?

Well, certainly, that's part of the problem. But. Still. It's hard to escape the impression that many on the British right are simply using the objections they've voiced as (frankly, rather weak) excuses to mask the real agenda: They want to stick it to Tony Blair.

See, while many Conservatives may dislike Islamofascists, they reserve the real, white-hot hatred for Blair and Nu Labour. Well, alright, after eight, long years in opposition, Conservative MPs must be simply itching to see Blair defeated. Only, with Labour heading for catastrophe over welfare reform, hospital reform and pensions, there are plenty of opportunities for Conservatives to bloody Labour's nose without weakening national security. So why attack Labour over the one issue that should, instinctively, unite conservatives behind any government willing to take a tough line?

Certainly, the desire to beat Blair is a powerful incentive (and on most other issues, one we'd support wholeheartedly), but what on earth has happened to conservatism in Britain, that national security ends up being seen as just another political issue to play football with?

Perhaps the answer, and one we know a great many people won't like hearing, is that, as a movement, British conservatism has lost its way. This has been coming for a while: the removal of Margaret Thatcher; the ineffectual Major years; the silly whining over 'policy theft' by Labour; the strange obsession with the fox hunting ban that seems to enrage many conservatives far more than the events of 7/7. It's difficult, in fact, not to conclude that British conservatism has been caught in a death-spiral for years now, becoming less and less relevant to the hopes and concerns of ordinary Britons.

But when Conservatives can't even summon the political will to defend their own country, it really is difficult to know where the British right goes from here.

(Cross-posted at The Wide Awakes)
(Welcome readers of House of Dumb)
(Welcome readers of Dangerously Subversive Dad. Also, do take a look at this similar post over at the excellent, new blog Doubleplusgoodspeak)

Remember

2005-11-11T14:49:00.000Z

Never forget

(Trackbacks sent to Cao's Blog and Stop the ACLU)

Free Jack Idema Blogburst

2005-11-10T03:03:00.000Z

Today marks the start of a campaign to free Jack Idema, the U.S. special forces soldier unjustly and illegally imprisoned along with two compatriots in Afghanistan. We've written about this case twice already, and from now on we intend to do so on a weekly basis as part of the Free Jack Idema Blogburst.

This time around, we're going to focus our attention on one of the most pervasive myths that big media have constructed to deter interest in Idema's case; namely that he was, at best, some kind of freelance amateur with little military training, and, at worst, an outright fantasist who relocated to Afghanistan in order to play secret agent.

It's absolutely crucial that no one buys into these lies, since far from being a rogue, Idema was actually conducting a covert operation for the U.S., and was betrayed by factions within the intelligence community who became resentful of his successes.

Here's how the BBC toed the official line of rubbishing a decent man at the time of his initial trial:

Idema said he had been working for the Pentagon.
"We were in contact directly by fax and e-mail and phone with [US Defence Secretary] Donald Rumsfeld's office," Idema said at a pre-trial hearing.
The Pentagon denied having anything to do with him.
But US spokesmen later had to admit they had accepted an Afghan man he handed over to them.
Idema claimed the man was a senior Taleban figure - but the US said he was not who Idema claimed he was and he was later released.

... So we're being expected to believe that all you have to do to get someone arrested in Afghanistan is walk up to a U.S. soldier with an Afghan in handcuffs and claim to be working for Donald Rumsfeld? No questions asked? They'll just take you completely on trust?

But, wait, because there's more:

Nato, too, says it was duped by Idema and his American associates into thinking they were serving US soldiers. The alliance agreed to send search teams into buildings for him.
"Their credibility was such that with their uniforms, their approach, our people believed they were what they said they were," said a spokesman for Nato in Afghanistan. "It was a mistake."

NATO as well? Wow. No wonder the hunt for Bin Laden is going so badly -- On the strength of this 'we got fooled -- oops!' line that both the Pentagon and NATO are running with, all senior al Qaeda figures would have to do to avoid detection is slip on a pair of shades and claim they were working for the CIA.

... Only, does any of this sound credible? At all, we mean? Can someone really run a military operation in Afghanistan for three years, working with high-level figures in the Northern Alliance, walking journalists around Tora Bora, taking prisoners and turning them over to the U.S. army, without anyone even asking the most basic questions about their authority to do so?

This is what the BBC are asking us to accept. Tellingly, though, they don't also include a summery of Jack Idema's career before Afghanistan:

Idema is a Green Beret
Idema was a member of U.S. Special Forces
Idema taught the Special Forces Orientation and UW course to our own SAS
Idema was working for the U.S. government in 1992, when he was the star of a Pentagon briefing which broke the news that former KGB agents were selling nuclear arms to the highest bidder following the break-up of the Soviet Union

Idema's done a lot more besides (details, including LOTS of background reading can be found at Cao's Blog and SuperPatriots), but suffice to say that if the BBC (or their sources at the Pentagon and in NATO) had included this kind of information in their 'profile' of the man, the argument that he was nothing more than a fantasist and a con artist would look even less credible.

Hence, the BBC chooses to feed its readers details of Jack's 1994 conviction for wire fraud, but neglect to point out that the FBI's investigating officer was later found to be working for the KGB -- Yes, they of the Nukes For Sale scandal that Idema broke two years earlier. They also fail to point out that Idema refused to give up his Lithuanian sources in that investigation to the Feds, thus making even more enemies within the intelligence community in the U.S.

See, here's the thing: Jack Idema really does work within the world of covert operations, and at the deepest levels. This should mean that he has our greatest respect: though, typically, we don't get to hear about the duties men like Idema perform on our behalf, they play a crucial role in the defence of our freedom. It's because of this, that Jack and his fellow prisoners deserve as much support as we can give them.

They are, after all, caught between a rock and a hard place. Not only have they been imprisoned, tortured and placed in constant danger because of the machinations of sections of the U.S.'s own intelligence community, but the treason brigades from MSM (who'll move heaven and earth to help an imprisoned Islamopath) have no interest at all in assisting a true patriot like Jack.

So. It's down to us to keep this story alive. Accordingly, we'd urge anyone who's interested in getting involved to email Cao and sign up for the Wednesday blogburst. Do it. Now.

John Simpson: Getting Basic And Resentful In France

2005-11-09T18:07:00.000Z

The BBC's senior blowhard, John Simpson, has been pulled off quagmire duty in Iraq this week to report on events France. Ever ready to give his readers a first-hand account of the grit and grim of Parisian slums, the BBC's star reporter kicks off his account of the riots with an ... um ... after-dinner anecdote from some guy who runs an opera house:

Last spring, over dinner in Paris, a close friend of mine who runs one of the biggest opera houses outside the French capital told me: "I've got this persistent feeling that 1968 is just about to happen all over again."

Well, let's be fair, John. Most arty-farty Le Monde readers have been expecting a replay of '68 since ... oh ... January 1969. Unless the next words out of Simpson's mouth are concerned with how stupidly wedded to the past leftists have become, could he please get unstuck from stupid and say something relevant about Islamofascism?

He had no idea that the violence would erupt in the dreary, featureless suburbs.

Nope. We're sticking with opera-guy. Meanwhile, commentators less obsessed with the glory days of their youth have been predicting these powder-kegs of angry, un-integrated, Islamist savages would explode at some point. It's no conservative's fault that neither Simpson nor his dinner guests could be bothered to listen.

He thought it was because the French political system had run out of ideas and credibility, and he knew the French.

... But since the intifada sweeping across France is being led by the kind of people who set fire to old ladies with yelps of 'God is great', surely the real question here is whether Simpson's little friend knows anything about North African Muslims.

These moments of weakness are the times when trouble always seems to break out.

Considering that there are relatively few places in the world where Islamopaths aren't on some kind of rampage, though, it's also arguable that the situation owes less to France's political system, and more to the high concentration of Muslims on hand to undermine it.

If President Jacques Chirac and the centre-right government which supports him had been in full control of France's political life, it is hard to think these long days and nights of continuous rioting would have taken place.

... So the riots are the fault of failed, centre-right policies, are they? Well, even allowing Simpson to get away with suggesting Chirac has a meaningfully conservative bone in his body, the fact remains that the welfare and housing systems, not to mention the unemployment, faced by France's Muslims are the result of decades of leftist policies. Chirac's government is a failure, but only because it has failed, miserably, to turn around the mess French socialists have made of their country. Simpson, predictably, is implying just the opposite.

The feelings of resentment and simmering anger in the suburbs would have been just as strong, but the crowds would mostly have held back.

Why would they? What evidence does Simpson have for this? Is he channelling the spirit of French-Muslim discontent? Taking wild guesses? ... Or just putting the boot into a vaguely right-of-centre politician in order to absolve the rioters? Well, we suppose that someone has to take the fall for this mess, and fond as BBC are of Chirac, they're a whole lot fonder of the Religion of Pieces. (So long, Jacques, and thanks for all the 'nons'.)

Years of reporting on riots and revolutions have shown me that crowds display a mysterious collective sense which somehow overrides the perceptions and fears of the individuals who make up the mass. And crowds have a remarkable feeling for the weakness of government.

Or, to look at this from another angle, when government is strong and effective, riots are quelled faster than MSM can deploy reporters to cover the problem. If Simpson really wants to come across as profound, he ought to at least figure out the difference between an insight and a truism.

There is of course a huge well of fury and resentment among the children of North African and African immigrants in the suburbs of French cities. The suburbs have been woefully ignored for 30 years.

And to think, if France were run on a socialist model, with high taxes, cradle-to-grave welfare programmes and a huge, bloated state apparatus, things would look so different. Oh. Wait ...

Violence there is regular and unexceptionable. Even on a normal weekend, between 20 and 30 vehicles are regularly attacked and burned by rioters.

But why stop there? After all, the resident Islamopaths of Paris also have a fondness for gang rapes, honour killings, violent anti-Semitism, bigamy and attacks on police and emergency services ... But maybe John Simpson runs shy of presenting this many hard facts to his readers all at once -- The BBC have, after all, spent the last four decades ignoring them in favour of their France-as-socialist-paradise line. Perhaps Simpson fears revealing the full extent of big media's deception all at once. Either that, or he has trouble admitting these things even to himself.

This time the riots are joined up, pre-planned, co-ordinated. At some level of consciousness, the demonstrators know that the governmental system they are facing is deeply, perhaps incurably, sclerotic.

No. What we're dealing with here are a bunch of sub-literate Islamist savages who've figured out nothing more complex than the fact that no one in the French government has the guts to use force to stop their antics.

Mr Chirac, standing back until his ministers showed their inability to agree a clear line on the rioting, seems not to have the answers when he speaks now. His presidency is overshadowed by an inescapable sense of past corruption and weakness, and he has governed France at a time when its economy and its position in the world have both declined sharply and markedly.

This isn't strictly true. Far from 'standing back', Chirac has actively resisted any and all calls for tough action to deal with the intifada. The problem isn't that this serial appeaser doesn't know what it will take to restore order -- It's that, as always, he simply lacks the courage to act.

No matter that events have thoroughly borne out his criticisms of the US and British invasion of Iraq in 2003. The Muslim teenagers who briefly applauded him then have long since forgotten all that - though of course if he had supported President George W Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair then, he would be in even greater trouble now.

Well, now. This is quite the paragraph. No wonder John Simpson has risen to the very top of the BBC's game -- It's not just any journalist who can cram this much stupidity into so few words.

For starters, Chirac didn't refuse to support the Iraqi liberation because he's a Man of Peace -- He did so in order to appease his own Muslim population (good plan!), do some grandstanding for the benefit of the worlds media, and, of course, to stick it to the U.S. This was everyone's assessment of Chirac back in 2003. Today, we can also factor in the billions France stood to lose in oil-for-food kickbacks and the involvement of its U.N. ambassador in the scandal.

As for events 'thoroughly bearing out' Chirac's refusal to support the liberation -- How so? Right now, Iraqis are a free people preparing to vote-in their first constitutional government, while both Tony Blair and George Bush have been returned to power by their respective electorates. As for Paris? It burns. Far from demonstrating that Chirac's appeasement in 2003 strengthened his hand, it either bought him no goodwill at all from resident Islamopaths, or, more likely, acted as a strong indication of how far he would go to appease them.

In 1968, too, President Charles de Gaulle and his ministers spoke sternly of the need for order to be restored immediately, and yet they did nothing.

Well, it's often said that Chirac sees himself as a latter-day de Gaulle ... Though, granted, no one expected him to enact the role quite so literally.

If the riot police could have restored order they would have done so, but they were overstretched and outwitted, and their only response was more of the kind of violence which made the crowds even more ferocious in their turn.

Just what is Simpson's point here? That the French police of 1968 were as inept as their politicians? Or that, like most of his journalistic peers, he suffers from a strange inability to break out of an endlessly replaying mental loop that starts with McCarthyism and ends with the fall of Saigon? Because, you know, it's one thing to have an understanding of history, and quite another to be trapped inside it while the rest of the world moves on.

I remember the 1968 riots very well.

You don't say.

But of course the differences between then and now were as great as the similarities. For a start, the riots of 2005 are still all about the bitter and genuine grievances of the Muslim and African communities, ignored and demeaned and kept in poverty by a system which cares very little about them.

Of course, it isn't only poor, oppressed Islamopaths who have grievances. Like as not, the owners of businesses ('sinful' theatres, bars, off-licences) they've shut down over the years didn't appreciate being driven out of their homes by bearded crazies from the seventh century. Then there are the women routinely gang-raped, the Jews routinely beaten, the ambulance and fire service personnel routinely set upon, and on and on and on. See, here's the thing: the reason French society has abandoned the estates now going up in flames is because the ROPers who inhabit them are impossible to live alongside. Maybe containment is the lazy option, but it wouldn't be necessary at all if French Muslims had integrated into European society from the go-get.

Only if a much wider swathe of French society gets involved on their side will the situation become truly pre-revolutionary, in the way that the crowds of 1968 were.

With 20% of the French population voting for a fascist animal in their last election, Simpson ought to be careful what he wishes for -- Not all revolutions favour the same kind of socialism as BBC journalists.

And since the riots have taken on a fiercely anti-French tone, and the violence and destruction have sickened so many people in the suburbs themselves, that seems unlikely at present.

... Though, again, what's the betting creatures like Jean-Marie Le Pen get closer to the levers of power with every act of dithering and appeasement that Chirac and company come out with. As things go, we'd pick Le Pen over a Caliphate, but since we'd sooner have neither Islamo- nor garden variety fascists running things across the Channel, it really ought to occur to people like Simpson that Muslims aren't the only people in France who have grievances that need to be addressed.

France, though, tends to move forward in fits and starts, rather than organically, and these fits and starts are often associated with violence.

Um ... We've heard some pretty strange excuses for multiculturalism in our time, but is John Simpson really trying to argue that by rampaging through France setting (non-Muslim) cars and businesses on fire, the Islamopaths are actually participating in one of the grand, old traditions of French politics?

Thanks to the Revolution, violence even has a kind of virtue which it simply does not possess in a country like Britain. When government becomes incapable of change, the crowds in the streets have to do the changing for themselves.

Unlike every other stable democracy in the world, where we just, you know, vote for a different government. Though, if we really are going back to the Revolution, perhaps that's not such a bad thing -- If all other attempts at integration fail, at least Muslim and French cultures can agree on a certain fondness for decapitation.

There is a great deal that has to be changed. I have seen many times for myself how the CRS, the deeply aggressive and ferocious force of riot police, have attacked Muslims and Africans in the streets in times of trouble.

Meanwhile, all Muslims and Africans wander around in a state of perfect and childlike innocence. Apart from the gang-rapes, that is. And the honour killings. And the torching of 30 cars and a couple of synagogues and calling it a quiet night out in the burbs. Seriously, if French Muslims have fouled their own nest to the point where the only way to police them is in full riot gear, what do they expect?

Last April, Amnesty International singled out the violence and racism of the French police towards the non-white people of the suburbs for particular criticism.

By the strange kind of coincidence that one encounters quite often with the BBC, this report came out at around the same time as most of Simpson's colleagues were whining and snivelling about 'gulags' and Korans in peril. Of course, back then, they were also running with the line that France was the model society to which we backward Brits and Americans should all aspire. Go figure.

Nicolas Sarkozy, the Interior Minister, now seems to be playing politics with the situation by appealing to the most basic and resentful attitudes of conservative France.

Tut. Don't you just hate those 'basic' and 'resentful' conservatives? Imagine: they expect to be able to walk down the street without being beaten to death by a mob of Islamist savages. If only they were capable of grasping the subtle nuances of multiculturalism the way John Simpson and his pal from the opera house do. That way, they'd understand that occasional outbursts of homicidal violence are just the French way.

Much of the violence on the streets of France's cities is mindless; some of it is malign. But simply stamping it down will not work - and anyway the CRS and the civil police have tried that, and their toughness has only made things worse.

... So Simpson's solution is -- What? Stand back and let Paris burn? Doubtless this would be the least basic and resentful solution, but what's the betting millions of French taxpayers are counting on a police force who at least attempt to enforce the law. You know, as opposed to standing around in the pile of ash that used to be Paris and opening a dialogue about multiculturalism.

France is going to have to change towards its unwilling, often unwelcome young second-generation population, and accommodate them better.

Funnily enough, Simpson doesn't trouble himself to offer any suggestions as to what accommodations the overwhelmingly basic and resentful French people should make in order to pacify the mobs. Granted, it can be a little difficult to interpret the desires of people whose only method of communication are arson and gang-rape, but if Simpson's going to the trouble of suggesting France makes concessions, he might at least tell us what these might be.

It is not enough to demand that these people drop their sense of themselves and fit in with the way France has traditionally ordered its affairs.

Is anyone demanding this? Do the French close mosques, burn Korans, deny Muslims the vote or force them to convert to Christianity? Well, no. This is Europe, not Saudi Arabia ...

... And therein lies the problem. See, the Islamofascists in France (as everywhere) aren't demanding to be treated in the same way as non-Muslims, but for the right to behave as they choose. They're fighting for the right to burn cars, shut down 'sinful' businesses, beat, rape and kill women at will, torch synagogues, assault Jews, and, at the end of it all, be grovelled to by a nation of subservient dhimmis.

See, out on the streets of Paris, the cops Simpson sneers at for their 'toughness' are actually trying to hold the line against an evil every bit as implacable as the brownshirts who rampaged through Berlin 70 years ago.

But most of all there has to be change in attitudes at the top. And if Mr Chirac cannot do it, he will be fatally damaged as president.

Well, every cloud has a silver lining. Sarkozy for 2007, anyone?

(Hat-tip Biased-BBC)

French Intifada: Picking Fleas Off The Sacred Cow

2005-11-07T14:45:00.000Z

Watching the British left's reaction to the French intifada is proving to be an infuriating experience. Eleven days into the violence, and most MSM hacks still can't bring themselves to use the word 'Muslim' to identify the thugs with petrol bombs. Indeed, to listen to the BBC tell the story, with it's constant references to 'youths' and 'boys as young as 12', you could be forgiven for thinking Paris was at the mercy of a sort of latter-day children's crusade.

Here's a choice example as al-Beeb's Joseph Winter frets over the street urchins of Paris:

Groups of boys and young men still hang around outside the area's shops and cafes and treat strangers with deep suspicion, if not outright hostility.
Although some complain that their voices are never heard, as we tried to speak to local residents, we were told at one point to leave the area or risk being attacked.
The nights of violence over the past week have given some young men a rare sense of control - even if it is only of the streets where they live.
[...]
Many feel that the state ignores them at best and at worst stands in the way of their attempts to escape the estates.

At first, it's difficult to work out why people like Winter seem so attached to the kind of Islamist riff-raff who pour petrol over disabled pensioners and set them alight. Is it really just their desire to pander to old Europe? A reach-around for Chirac as thanks for his anti-war posturing two years ago? Well, no.

You see, it isn't just the cars and old ladies the street-trash of Clichy-sous-Bois are threatening to put a torch to -- Dodging the petrol bombs and bullets is one of the left's sacred, and now endangered, cows.

We're talking about multiculturalism, of course, which has always been one of the left's more potent weapons in the culture war. By running 'race' together with 'culture' (that is, nature with nurture), socialists have been able to manufacture entire victim classes, permanently in 'need', permanently dependent on the ever-growing legions of statoid minions airlifted in from cultural studies departments to care for them. What's more, should anyone feel moved to point out that setting fire to old ladies and shooting at cops has nothing to do with the human genome, and everything to do with morality (or the lack thereof), the left are ever-ready to defend their meal tickets by howling about racism, fascism, nazism. Blah, blah, blah.

Thus far, this has proven to be a highly effective strategy for cowing politicians of every stripe. (Though why this should be the case is a mystery, since clamping down on immigration or dealing with crimes committed by non-whites is no more evidence of racism than kissing a baby for a photo-op is evidence of paedophilia.) But. Still. The left's screeching and race-hustling has had the intended effect, walling whole sections of European countries off from any meaningful integration.

In this sense, then, the left actually parasitise places like Leeds (hello suicide bombers) and Clichy-sous-Bois (hello rioting mobs), inflating the size of the state under the pretext of dealing with problems that are never, actually, solved.

But then again, why should they be? After all, a certain amount of unemployment, crime and drug abuse plays well for the leftists who find jobs as social workers, drug councillors, probation officers, etc. It does the same for larger parasites like Jacques Chirac and Gordon Brown, who get to transfer greater and greater wealth from individuals to the state in order to bankroll this entire, dysfunctional mess. In this case, the left's motto is: If it's broken, don't fix it.

Unfortunately for the liberal elites, however, either no one explained the statist scam to the ROPers living in Clichy-sous-Bois, or (more likely) they have agendas of their own:

Some are even calling for the areas where Muslims form a majority of the population to be reorganized on the basis of the "millet" system of the Ottoman Empire: Each religious community (millet) would enjoy the right to organize its social, cultural and educational life in accordance with its religious beliefs.
In parts of France, a de facto millet system is already in place. In these areas, all women are obliged to wear the standardized Islamist "hijab" while most men grow their beards to the length prescribed by the sheiks.
The radicals have managed to chase away French shopkeepers selling alcohol and pork products, forced "places of sin," such as dancing halls, cinemas and theaters, to close down, and seized control of much of the local administration.

Of course, the BBC's Joseph Winter isn't quite ready to admit there's an ... um ... Islamic flavour to the riots. Neither, for that matter, are the rest of the Gramscian elites and race hustlers. When all's said and done, a millet full of Islamopaths on welfare is probably going to cost French taxpayers as much as a suburb full of them, and -- hey! -- maybe the new order will create social problems thus unheard of ... Disability pay for handless thieves, counselling for the traumatised children of women stoned to death -- Hell, the possibilities are endless.

There's a lesson here for the rest of us, though: if you're pondering on how to best deal with a rabid dog -- Don't take advice from its fleas.

(Hat-tip A Tangled Web)

Seven Paras and Jack Idema : Human Rights, Human Wrongs

2005-11-05T22:38:00.000Z

As DumbJon points out, the British left are working themselves into one of their twittering-fits over the acquittal of seven Paras (that's Parachute Regiment, for non-Brits) who'd been charged with murder and violent disorder during the liberation of Iraq. Leaving aside the small matter that these 'charges' sound suspiciously like the definition of 'warfare' as filtered through the fevered brain of a human rights hustler, it turns out there were other ... um ... problems when it came to bringing this case to trail (And no, we're not talking about the £10m of taxpayer's money wasted on this travesty):

Three witnesses admitted to lying about being assaulted by British troops at the urging of the dead man's family
It was proven that witnesses could not have seen events they claimed to have seen
Another Iraqi witness used the case to seek compensation
Another witness admitted to lying about being beaten while pregnant, and only agreed to give evidence at all in exchange for a $100 a day fee

Well, if that's how the Iraqis handle their justice system, it's clearly a good thing that the actual court martial took place in Britain, where the shambles of lies and bribery could be exposed and the case dismissed ...

... Though, predictably, this hasn't prevented the treason brigades from snivelling about the unfairness of it all:

Amnesty International's UK director Kate Allen said it had "longstanding concerns" about the way that allegations of abuse by members of Britain's armed forces abroad are investigated.
She said: "International law requires a prompt, impartial, thorough, effective and independent investigation into alleged abuses.
"A decision over whether to bring charges should be taken independently of the commanding officer and other military bodies."

It is, of course, almost comical to witness Kate Allen (a woman whose organisation sets up howling about 'gulags' at the merest suggestion of a Koran in peril) doing a 180 in order to denounce a trail judge for dismissing a case in which all the witnesses admitted to perjuring themselves.

Exhibiting a similar degree of hypocrisy, the awful Shami Chakrabarti from Liberty wades into the fray, complaining that:

"As the death occurred under British jurisdiction we would hope for the highest standards to be employed in the investigation and trial.
"Rather than just trying individuals in these cases, the entire system should be under review to ensure that there is not a culture which would allow the alleged abuses to take place."

Um ... Well, both sets of Puppy grandparents died under 'British jurisdiction' too. Granted, they passed away quietly, in bed, and of natural causes, but -- Hey! -- maybe we should accuse the Parachute Regiment of murdering them. What with the perjury and lack of hard evidence, the case wouldn't get very far, but that doesn't seem to bother Kate and Shami, does it?

See, this really is the damnedest thing -- That the sort of people who'll howl for a terrorist's acquittal on the grounds that he chipped a toenail while in police custody can, without a hint of blush, call for what amounts to a lynching when the guys standing in the dock happen to be members of Her Majesty's Armed Forces. What's going on? If Kate and Shami could stop salivating over the prospect of imprisoned British soldiers, perhaps they'd be so kind as to tell us.

In the meantime, we here at Puppy Mansions have a little thought experiment for our readers. What would happen if, instead of trying the seven Paras in Britain, we'd turned them over to the Iraqis? Hmm? Would anyone there have bothered to investigate the credibility of witnesses? Or questioned the morality of paying people $100 a day to turn up in court? More to the point, would the likes of Kate and Shami even care? Would MSM devote acres of space to whining over civil liberties trounced and human rights abused?

Very unfortunately, as the case of Jack Idema proves, the answer is 'no':

Even though the boys [Idema and his men] are at Pulacharke Prison in Afghanistan, they are in the physical custody of the Islamic State of Afghanistan, they are, in fact, in the actual custody and control of the American government, the FBI (and should have protection from the American Embassy), as they are American citizens and not Afghans.
There have been some severe violations of law here. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and the Geneva Conventions of August 12, 1949. The Geneva Conventions are relative to both Combatants and non combatants in time of war and accompany said protocols. THE US and the government of Afghanistan are both signatories to those agreements and/or conventions. Those violations give rise to liberty restraint complaints.

Well, now, you'd think this would be precisely the kind of thing the likes of Kate and Shami would be getting their knickers in a twist over, wouldn't you? Men imprisoned by courts which have no jurisdiction over them? Civil liberties flouted right, left and centre? The Geneva Conventions torn up and thrown away? Gosh, but where are the people who fret terribly over the splashing of Korans and the quality of lemon chicken served to Gitmo inmates?

Well ... They're fretting over splashed Korans and lemon chickens. You see, Jack Idema and the folks from Task Force Sabre aren't part of any Designated Victim Group that leftists like Kate and Shami are programmed to pander to. Instead, Idema's one of us:

Jack is a former member of the US Army Special Forces and is a Green Beret. He has operated for the US Government, and trained foreign counter-terrorist forces in Nicaragua against the Sandinistas, in El Salvador with the Ramon Bellosa Immediate Reaction Battalion against the FMLN terrorists, in East Germany and Europe against the Bader Meinhoff Gang, in Thailand with the Thai Special Warfare Command, in Haiti protecting the US Mission against dissidents, in the Middle East against Hezbollah, Hamas and Abu Nidal terrorists, in Lithuania against the OMON terrorists, and numerous other operational areas.

So let's put all this together.

We have two groups of soldiers, one British, one American, both standing accused of being less than ... um ... gentle with the kind of Islamofascist scum who cut up little schoolgirls for fun. In both instances, the 'cases' put together by the authorities, in Iraq and Afghanistan respectively, wouldn't survive the scrutiny of a British or U.S. judge. Luckily for the Paras, they made it back from Iraq in order to stand trial in Britain --Jack Idema and his men weren't so fortunate, and wound up falling into just the kind of legal limbo that usually sets MSM and human rights hustlers off snapping and snarling like a pack of angry Chihuahuas.

Of course, Task Force Sabre, like the Paras who escaped a similar fate, are decent men, fighting hard against the head-hackers who wage war against our civilisation. This, it seems, makes all the difference as far as leftists are concerned -- When the good guys aren't convicted, they can scarcely contain their rage, but when men like Jack Idema are imprisoned after a mockery of a trial, the silence from the very people who profess to care the most about human rights is deafening. Funny, that.

[Anyone wanting to know more about Jack Idema should visit SuperPatriots or Cao's Blog. And please, help get the truth about this story out.]

Henri Astier: Trudging Through The French Intifada With Sadek

2005-11-03T14:47:00.000Z

Having spent the best part of a week ignoring the story in the hope it would go away, the British MSM have finally (and grudgingly) acknowledged that Muslims have decided to burn sizeable parts of their beloved Paris to the ground.

Here's the BBC's Henri Astier, bemoaning the 'plight' of French Muslims:

Days of rioting in the bleaker suburbs of Paris have highlighted discontent among many French youths of North African origin.
As part of a series on French Muslims, the BBC News website's Henri Astier looks at the issue of discrimination, a leading source of frustration in France's unemployment-riddled ghettos.

... So unemployment's behind the Paris riots, is it? And behind the unemployment, presumably, there are lots of evil, white racists just itching to stick it to poor, underprivileged Muslims? Muslims like, oh, Sadek:

Sadek recently quit his job delivering groceries near Saint-Denis, just north of Paris. He was tired of climbing stairs with heavy bags.
Sadek, 31, has a secondary school education [that's high school for U.S. readers] and aspires to something better. But he knows his options are limited: "With a name like mine, I can't have a sales job."

Well, and at the risk of distracting poor Sadek from his wallowing, it's also worth pointing out that 'I quit my last job because I didn't like the trudging' is probably more of a blight on his CV than ethnicity -- Whereas some employers like Muslims and some don't, it's a fair bet that very few are on the lookout for someone who thinks delivering groceries is too much like hard work.

As far as Henri Astier's concerned, though, neither the behaviour of Muslims in general, nor Sadek in particular, has any bearing on the French riots -- For him, the issue reduces to the simple notion that if Muslims suffer, it must be the fault of racist whites. This is a tactic the left everywhere are fond of employing; they invoke the spectre of racism (which genuinely appals most civilised people), then use it to push us deeper into a victim/entitlement culture by arguing that rioters/terrorists/hurricane victims wouldn't be such a problem if only we'd agree to a to tax hikes and a whole raft of social engineering projects. It's a clever manoeuvre, to be sure. But is it justified?

Well, France's immigrant population is made up so overwhelmingly of North African Muslims that it's difficult to test the theory there -- Since the mass-immigration comes from a single source, it's native French vs. Muslims all the way.

But not so in Britain. Here, after our Empire folded, we took large numbers of immigrants from both Hindu and Muslim cultures, from India and Pakistan. Forty years and three generations on, the situation the two groups are in couldn't be more different. Indians have integrated perfectly. They work hard, contribute to the life of the nation, and are now actually out-performing whites -- 25% of British medical schools' intake is now Indian. British Muslims, on the other hand, are dogged by pretty much the same problems as their French counterparts: poverty, unemployment, social unrest.

Isn't it at all worth pondering why two groups of Muslim immigrants (Pakistani in Britain and North African in France), should both fail so spectacularly, while, at least in Britain's case, non-Muslim immigrants often out-perform their hosts? Couldn't it be that the problems Muslims face are self-inflicted, brought by their backwards culture, and nothing to do with racism whatever?

These are just the kind of dots that the BBC's Henri Astier refuses join up:

The pressure group SOS Racisme regularly highlights cases of employers discarding applicants with foreign names.
It says such discrimination is particularly rife in the retail and hospitality industries - but also for jobs involving no contact with the public.
"Some companies believe that to be responsible for marketing you must have roots in mainland France over several generations to understand the French consumer attitudes," according to a recent SOS Racisme report.

For Astier and his lefty friends, this is evidence of racism, but there are other, more sensible, explanations that don't involve labelling the entire white population of Europe racist?

Well, there's the simple fact that if you're in the business of selling a product to Frenchmen, you'll probably have more luck hiring someone who knows a little about France and its people. Because Muslims integrate badly, or not at all, it's hardly surprising they have difficulties finding work that demands an understanding of the very culture they spend most of their time forcibly rejecting. So that's one thing.

Another is the distance of Islamic culture from that of the West. In a post 7/7 poll, the Telegraph newspaper revealed that a staggering one in four British Muslims had sympathy with the motives of the bombers. So, again, do you hire poor, trudging Sadek, knowing that there's a 25% chance he'd rather kill your customers than sell them product? Or play it safe and hire from a culture where psychopathic tendencies run at a more manageable 1%?

And then there's the attitude to women; the beatings, gang-rapes and honour killings that accompany Muslims wherever they go. Where does that leave the swarthy, bearded guy you've hired with respect to female co-workers and customers?

And what if you're doing business with Jews? Well, exactly.

The thing is that while a good proportion of Muslims aren't frothing-at-the-mouth Islamopaths, as a group they do carry far, far more baggage than any other community. In the world of employment, this counts against them in the same way as, say, long-term disability. No one seriously suggests that employers hate the disabled -- It's just that, given a choice between an able-bodied employee and a guy who might need frequent sick leave, it makes sense to hire the healthy. Likewise, given a choice between a Muslim who may cause all kinds of problems and a non-Muslim who almost certainly won't, it makes sense to hire the guy who isn't sporting an Osama bin Laden T-shirt. This has nothing to do with racism: it's simply how things work in a buyer's market.

The big question, though, is whether Muslims are prepared to deal with this reality. You know, as opposed to peddling as fast as possible in the opposite direction:

According to some, the concept of "integration" itself is flawed.
"People always talk of the need to 'integrate' Muslims. But the youths are French. Why should they need integrating?" asks Samia Amara, 23, a youth worker near Paris.
Mr Sabeg agrees that "integration" is just hot air. "What does it mean? Are some French people supposed to integrate and others to be integrated?"

Well, fair enough. If Muslims don't want to integrate, no one in a free society (not even one as venal as France) is going to force them to. Only, if the ROP are really serious about improving their chances of gainful employment, indulging in a heady mix of radicalism, rioting and suicide bombing is probably one of the least favourable strategies for achieving this.

(Cross-posted at The Wide Awakes)

Conservative Party Rounds U-Bend: Keeps Flushing

2005-11-02T19:34:00.000Z

It's been a couple of weeks since we looked in on what useless British Home Secretary Charles Clarke was up to with respect to our 'tough' new anti-terror laws. Drafted in the days following 7/7, these were meant to protect us from Islamist crazies bent on destruction, but, bit by bit, Clarke has chipped away at virtually every part of the new legislation in order to please 'moderate' Muslims and human rights hustlers.

As the Bill enters its discussion phase, then, Clarke has signalled his eagerness to waddle away from yet another fight:

Home Secretary Charles Clarke has hinted he may be prepared to compromise on controversial plans to hold terrorist suspects for up to 90 days.

What's so shocking, though, is that this latest climbdown comes about because of pressure from the 'Conservative' Party. Here's Clarke's opposite number, David Davis, explaining why he thinks it's alright to play petty politics with the security of our nation:

Shadow home secretary Mr Davis told BBC Radio 4's Today programme: "I am pretty sure we will get the 90 days down. I expect the House of Commons will gravitate around 28 days.
"That will be at least a massive improvement on what we have in front of us now."

Well, doubtless, 28 days in jail would, indeed, be a 'massive improvement' ... Though only if you happen to be a busy Islamofascist with a suicide bombing to go to. For the rest of us, giving police the powers they've repeatedly asked for still sounds like a far saner option.

Now, granted, David Davis hasn't got the easiest of jobs. After all, the whole point of being in opposition politics is that you get to oppose the government of the day -- It must be galling to watch Charles Clarke gleefully eviscerating so much of his own legislation that by the time the Bill reaches Parliament, there's barely anything left of it for Conservatives to criticise.

But. Still. The 90-day detention period Davis hopes to score points by shortening is desperately needed by police and security services. Here's why: In the past, terrorists could be relied upon to make every effort to separate themselves from explosives before setting them off. Sadly, the Muslim fetish for self-detonation (not to mention the absence of an upper-limit to the amount of destruction the scumbags would cause if able to do so) means that police need to swoop on bearded crazies before their plots reach the bomb- or wmd-assembly stage. Unless, of course, we're now expecting our security services to regularly go Boom along with the Islamopaths they're trying to apprehend.

While these early arrests certainly save police and civilian lives, they also mean the evidence gathered takes longer to assemble into an actionable case, and over the last three years, police have been forced to release hundreds of holy warriors on the grounds that the case against them can't be made in time.

This is the situation that David Davis and the Conservative Party are arguing should be allowed to continue. In doing so, they're effectively positioning themselves to the left of Labour, the police, the security services and, well, the entire non-Islamopathic population of Britain. In fact, the only people who are in favour of more coddling for bearded crazies are the Lib Dumbs, human rights lawyers, and ... um ... Ken Clarke.

Here's the Big Beast himself, speaking with the all moral conviction of someone who never has to use public transport:

Ex-chancellor Ken Clarke described the bill as a knee-jerk response to terrorist atrocities.
"I do think this gesture politics of introducing tough so-called draconian laws on terrorism every time we have a terrorist incident is a quite false way of protecting the public," he told BBC Radio 4's Today programme.

All of which leaves us wondering why, if Davis can't bring himself to simply back the government when it comes to national security, he doesn't argue the case for even tougher anti-terror measures? After all, if Conservatives pushed for year-long detentions, then split the difference with Nu Labour at, say, six months, we'd not only be more secure as a country, but also treated to enjoyable spectacle of watching both Charles' and Ken Clarke's heads explode.

(UPDATE: Commenter 'Will' draws our attention to an excellent article in The Times which makes similar points to our own post. Here's a taster:

To many Tories, Islamist terrorism is a bit like the tsunami — terrible but something that they can’t do much about. They don’t like Osama bin Laden, but they like Tony Blair even less. After all, it was Mr Blair, not bin Laden, who “swindled” them out of their ministerial cars. Certainly, al-Qaeda seems to excite little of the rage that Conservative MPs once felt about Irish republican terrorism.

We'd only add that this moral bankruptcy isn't confined to Conservative MPs -- Many so-called conservatives outside Westminster also would also see a dozen more 7/7s in order to stick it to Blair. What a sickening mess British conservatism has become. Go read it all.)